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A court in Bangladesh has ordered officials to request an Interpol red notice for the British Labour MP Tulip Siddiq over a corruption case linked to the allocation of government land in Dhaka.
Bangladesh’s anti-corruption commission has alleged Siddiq used her relationship with her aunt, the former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, to influence the allocation of a plot of state-owned land in Dhaka’s Gulshan district to a private company. Siddiq has rejected the claim as baseless and politically motivated.
Siddiq, the MP for Hampstead and Highgate, was convicted in absentia last year when a court in Dhaka found she was complicit in the allocation of state land which British lawyers have since condemned.
She has been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in Bangladesh over related corruption convictions, carried out in her absence, and faces a combined six-year sentence across multiple cases involving her aunt and other family members. She has rejected the rulings and allies have condemned the rulings as flawed.
The Labour MP has denied the charges, claiming that much of the evidence being presented by prosecutors was forged.
Red notices are requests distributed to police forces worldwide, not international arrest warrants. They do not automatically require action and individual countries can decide whether to enforce them.
The UK does not have an extradition treaty with Bangladesh, which would make any attempt to return Siddiq to face proceedings there complicated.
Siddiq resigned as a Treasury minister last year, saying the controversy risked distracting from the UK Labour government’s work, though she denied wrongdoing.
Any Interpol request would be subject to review, and the absence of an extradition framework means there is no immediate pathway to enforcement. But the symbolism of a red notice carries weight.
The legal action comes after leading British lawyers criticised the early stages of Siddiq’s trial in Bangladesh over serious due-process concerns. They said she was denied basic rights such as access to legal representation and a meaningful opportunity to answer the allegations.
The group of lawyers including Robert Buckland KC, a former Tory justice secretary, and the former Tory attorney general Dominic Grieve, wrote a letter to Bangladesh’s high commissioner in the UK, Abida Islam, saying a lawyer Siddiq had instructed to represent her was put under house arrest and faced threats to his daughter.
“Such a process is artificial and contrived and an unfair way of pursuing a persecution,” they wrote.
The interim government’s stated priorities have been to pursue legal action against Hasina and senior figures from her former government over alleged corruption and human rights abuses during her 15 years in power.
Hasina has remained in exile in India since her fall from power last August and the country has yet to respond to extradition requests by Bangladesh for her to return to serve her sentence.
