Former Bangladesh President Hussain Mohammed Ershad yesterday turned himself in to begin a five-year jail term at Dhaka Central Jail for corruption as violence erupted, fuelled by angry supporters from Ershad's Jatiya Party who clashed with riot police around Dhaka Central Jail.

Earlier, the former president surrendered his bail bond at the court of second additional district and sessions judge, Abdus Salam Sikder, following a High Court order that sentenced him to five years in prison for corruption and fined him Taka 50 million ($1million).

After a brief court appearance, Ershad, 70, leader of the main faction of the opposition Jatiya Party (JP), was taken away to jail.

A district court sentenced him to seven years jail in August for a 1991 corruption case and ordered him to pay a fine of more than Tk50 million but the term was reduced on appeal to five years.

Ershad, who went to jail after he stepped down from power in the face of mass upsurge on December 6, 1990, was convicted in a number of corruption cases filed between 1990-93.

Lawyers said yesterday they would file a petition for bail and said some time would be subtracted from his sentence to take account of the six years he served earlier for corruption, only being released in 1997.

In 1993 the trial court had sentenced Ershad to seven years in prison for illegally possessing 3,150 square metres of state-owned land in a business district of the capital while he was the country's military dictator.

He built a 12-storey office complex on the property, which was taken over by the government after his conviction. In upholding the conviction in August, however, the High Court reduced the sentence to five years plus a penalty of more than Tk50 million ($1 million).

If he did not pay the fine, he would have to serve the full seven years in prison, the court said.
The court fined Ershad's wife Raushan, also a legislator, who yesterday embraced her husband as he said, "take care of yourself and the children."

It was not clear yesterday who would now head the party as Ershad also lost his parliamentary membership soon after his conviction in August. Newspapers reported the new party leader could be either Raushan or the party's secretary general Naziur Rahman.

Ershad has only one year and three months left to serve of the five-year sentence, said prison official Waliur Rahman. He had refused to surrender until all legal moves had been exhausted, and only gave up after the Supreme Court upheld the verdict.

Violence erupted as Ershad was led to the Dhaka Central Jail as his party activists attacked vehicles and police used batons to disperse them, witnesses said.

Several thousand party activists shouting "We will break the jail lock and free you" jammed the court complex, witnesses said. Panic gripped the old parts of Dhaka, where both the court and the jail are located, and shoppers ran and shops were shuttered quickly.

"I am ready to make any sacrifice in the interest of the country and people and not afraid of imprisonment and repression in political life," Ershad said in a statement.