Bangladesh ex-PM Khaleda Zia freed after arch-rival toppled

Dhaka: Bangladesh's uncompromising ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia has been released from years of house arrest after her bitter enemy Sheikh Hasina was ousted as premier and fled as protesters stormed her palace.

The ferocious rivalry between the two women - born in blood and cemented in prison - has defined politics in the Muslim-majority nation for decades.

Zia, 78, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for graft in 2018 under Hasina's rule.

Hasina, 76, was ousted on Monday after mass protests, with the army chief declaring the military would form an interim government.

Orders were then issued for the release of prisoners from the protests, as well as Zia.

Zia is chairperson of the key opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP). Party spokesman A.K.M Wahiduzzaman told AFP Tuesday that she "is now freed".

She is in poor health, confined to a wheelchair with rheumatoid arthritis and struggling with diabetes and cirrhosis of the liver.

Decades-long feud

The enmity between Zia and Hasina is known popularly in Bangladesh as the "Battle of Begums", with "begum" a Muslim honorific in South Asia for powerful women.

Their feud has its roots in the murder of Hasina's father - the country's founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman - along with her mother, three brothers and several other relatives in a 1975 military coup.

Zia's husband Ziaur Rahman was then the deputy army chief and effectively took control himself three months later.

He kickstarted economic recovery in poverty-stricken Bangladesh with privatisations but was killed in another military coup in 1981.

The BNP mantle fell to his widow, then a 35-year-old mother of two young sons who was dismissed by critics as a politically inexperienced housewife.

Zia led opposition to dictator Hussain Muhammad Ershad, boycotting sham elections in 1986 and mounting street protests.

She and Hasina joined forces to push Ershad out in a wave of protests in 1990 and then faced off in Bangladesh's first free polls.

Zia won and led from 1991-96, and again in 2001-2006, as she and Hasina alternated in power.

Mutual dislike

Their mutual dislike was blamed for a January 2007 political crisis that prompted the military to impose emergency rule and set up a caretaker government. Both were detained for more than a year.

Hasina won elections in December 2008 by a landslide and led uninterrupted until she fled to India in a helicopter on Monday.

She had tightened her grip on power by detaining tens of thousands of BNP members. Hundreds also disappeared.

Zia was convicted and jailed in 2018 on graft charges her party rejected as politically motivated.

She was later released into house arrest on condition she neither took part in politics nor went abroad for medical treatment.

Son in exile

Zia's first cabinet was hailed for liberalising Bangladesh's economy in the early 1990s, sparking decades of growth.

However, her second term as the premier of an Islamist-allied coalition was marked by graft allegations against her government and sons.

There was also a series of Islamist attacks, one of which killed more than 20 people and almost claimed Hasina's life.

The anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion police unit Zia created has been accused of hundreds of extrajudicial killings.

Her eldest son Tarique Rahman led the BNP from exile in London while she was in jail but he was convicted in absentia and sentenced to life in prison over his alleged role in a bomb attack on a Hasina rally in 2004.

The BNP says the charges were a politically motivated attempt to expel Zia's dynasty from politics.

Zia won respect for her resolute attitude, although her inability to compromise left her unable to cut deals with important allies at home or abroad.

That defiance extended even to the death of her youngest son from a heart attack in Malaysia in 2015.

Hasina went to her home to offer sympathy and condolences but Zia did not open the door.