Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia faces corruption trial

Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and other leading opposition members are to go on trial next month on corruption charges.

Prosecutors say she and three co-accused took 31.5m taka (about $400,000) from a charitable trust named after former president Ziaur Rahman, her late husband who was assassinated in 1981

Khaleda  Zia and four others, including her son Tarique Rahman, are also accused of embezzling 21.5m taka - money which prosecutors say should have gone to an orphanage set up in memory of her late husband.

Khaleda Zia and her associates deny embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars in charitable funds.

The court in Dhaka set  April  21,2014 as the start of the trial after rejecting her lawyers' pleas for more time

The trial is likely to stoke tension in Bangladesh after Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party(BNP) boycotted disputed elections in Jan 2014

The Governing Awami League, led by PM Sheikh Hasina, won the vote, which Khaleda Zia called a "scandalous farce".

Note

Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia - who are bitter political enemies - have alternated from government to opposition for most of the past two decades.