Ex-PM Manmohan Singh, Khaleda Zia among those included in B’desh parliament’s condolence motion

Dhaka: Bangladesh parliament on Thursday condoled the deaths of several national and international leaders, including former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, Bangladesh’s Khaleda Zia and slain Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The maiden session of the 13th parliament adopted a motion to condole the deaths initially included 31 names, including late Pope Francis and Matia Chowdhury, a former parliamentarian and leader of deposed premier Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League.

However, after the main opposition Jamaat-e-Islami insisted, names of executed 1971 war criminals, tried as hardened collaborators of Pakistani troops during the country’s Liberation War, were also included in it.

The motion also included names of those killed during the July-August

mass protests that toppled the Sheikh Hasina government in August 2024.

The newly elected speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmed, a veteran 1971 freedom fighter, agreed to incorporate

the names of the executed war criminals as Jamaat claimed the initial list of names were “one sided.”