Dhaka: BNP on Tuesday alleged that the government is not allowing Lord Carlile, a British legal expert and adviser to Khaleda Zia’s legal team, to arrive here.

‘Khaleda Zia’s legal team’s new member and British lawyer Lord Carlile is being obstructed to come to Bangladesh,’ said BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, reports the UNB.

He came up with the allegation at a press conference at BNP’s Nayapaltan central office.

The BNP leader said Carlile applied for visa to the Bangladesh High Commission, London several weeks back to join the Khaleda’s defence team during Tuesday’s hearing at the Supreme Court’s Appellate Division.

‘The High Commission neither told him yes nor no. It’s exposed that the government is directly and unlawfully obstructing him to enter Bangladesh. We think the government didn’t give him visa as it doesn’t want Khaleda Zia’s legal team to get stronger,’ he added.

Earlier on March 20, BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir announced that Lord Carlile was appointed to help Khaleda’s lawyers’ panel here to carry out legal battle in her cases.

On February 8, the BNP chief was sent to jail after she had been sentenced to five years’ jail by a lower court in the Zia Orphanage Trust graft case.

Rizvi said though the government is not allowing Lord Carlile to arrive here, two layers—one from Canada and another from the UK - had come to Bangladesh to defend current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina when she was in jail after the 1/11 political changeover in 2007.

The BNP leader hoped that Khaleda will get justice from the Supreme Court as the hearing on the leave-to-appeal petitions challenging her bail granted by the High Court is going on at the Appellate Division. ‘We hope we’ll get justice from the highest court as the judiciary is constitutionally an independent institution.’

Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court adjourned the hearing on the leave-to-appeal petitions regarding her bail in the Zia Orphanage Trust graft case till Wednesday.