Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus was found guilty Monday of violating labor laws in Bangladesh, a prosecutor told AFP, in a case his supporters say was motivated by policies.
The economist, Nobel laureate in 2006, and three of his collaborators within Grameen Telecom, one of the companies he founded, are accused of not having created a provident fund there and of having thus violated the law of work.
A court in the capital, Dhaka, found them guilty, sentencing them to “six months of imprisonment”, senior prosecutor Khurshid Alam Khan told AFP, adding that they were immediately released on bail in the waiting for the call.
The four accused reject these accusations.
“I was punished for a crime that I did not commit,” Mr. Yunus reacted after the judgment.
“If you want to call it justice, you can,” he said again with irony.
“This verdict is unprecedented,” Abdullah Al Mamun, a lawyer for Mr. Yunus, told AFP. “We did not get justice. »
Mr. Yunus faces around 100 other charges relating to alleged labor law violations and allegations of corruption.
In November, the Nobel laureate told reporters that he had not profited from any of the more than 50 companies he had started in Bangladesh.
“They were not intended for my personal benefit, whether Grameen Bank or many other organizations,” Mr. Yunus defended.
According to Khaja Tanvir, another lawyer for the economist interviewed by AFP, the case is “worthless, false and unjustified”.
“The sole purpose of this case is to harass and humiliate him in front of the whole world,” he said.
Mr Yunus, 83, is credited with lifting millions out of poverty through his pioneering microcredit bank, but he has fallen out with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who accused him of “sucking blood ” poor.
The economist’s popularity among the Bangladeshi population has made him a potential rival of the Prime Minister, who is practically guaranteed to win a fifth term in the legislative elections which are to be held on Sunday and which the opposition is boycotting.
“Parody of justice”
Irene Khan, former secretary general of Amnesty International and now special rapporteur at the United Nations, was present at the hearing on Monday. Questioned by AFP, she described the judgment as a “parody of justice”.
“A social activist and Nobel laureate who brought honor and pride to the country is being persecuted for frivolous reasons,” she observed.
Critics accuse Bangladesh’s courts of rubber-stamping decisions by Ms. Hasina’s government, which has become increasingly assertive in its repression of political opposition.
In August, 160 international personalities, including former American President Barack Obama and former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, published a joint open letter denouncing the “continuous legal harassment” of which the microcredit pioneer is the victim. .
The signatories, including more than a hundred Nobel laureates, said they feared for his “safety and freedom.”
Amnesty International accused the Bangladesh government of exploiting labor laws when Yunus attended a hearing in September, and called for an immediate end to the “harassment” the organization says he is facing. .
The criminal proceedings against him constitute “a form of political reprisal for his work and his opposition”, according to Amnesty International.