DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Bangladesh’s ailing former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia left the nation's capital for London on Tuesday for medical treatment, said one of her advisers.
Zahiruddin Swapan, an adviser to Zia, told The Associated Press by phone that the three-time former premier and head of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party left Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport late Tuesday on an air ambulance.
“Our senior leaders left the airport seeing her off,” Swapan said.
Her ailments include liver cirrhosis, cardiac disease and kidney problems, according to her physician.
Zia left behind a South Asian nation grappling with uncertainty over its political future after her archrival, former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, was ousted in a student-led mass uprising in August. Zia and Hasina are the most influential political leaders in Bangladesh.
An interim government headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus is running the country and plans to hold elections in December this year or in the first half of 2026.
Zia was sentenced to 17 years in jail under Hasina’s rule following two corruption cases stemming from 2001-2006 when she was prime minister. Her supporters say the charges against her were politically motivated, an allegation Hasina’s administration denied. Under Yunus, Zia was acquitted in one of the cases in November and an appeal in the second case was being heard on Tuesday.
Zia, 79, was freed from prison on bail under Hasina through a government order and had been undergoing medical treatment in Bangladesh. But Hasina’s administration did not allow her to travel abroad for treatment despite requests seeking approval.
The special air ambulance was sent by Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. Hundreds of her supporters gathered outside her residence in the city's upscale Gulshan area to see her off.
Zia’s motorcade took nearly three hours to cross about a 10-kilometer (6-mile) stretch of road to get to the airport from her residence in Dhaka’s Gulshan area as thousands of her desperate supporters greeted her on the way, creating traffic chaos. Her hours-long journey to the airport was broadcast live by television stations.
Enamul Haque Chowdhury, a close aide of Zia, told reporters that the air ambulance had arrived from Doha to take her to London, where her eldest son and heir apparent Tarique Rahman has been in exile since 2007. Rahman is the acting chairman of Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party and is expected to lead the party toward the election. The country’s dynastic politics have long focused on the families of Hasina and Zia.
Zia is the wife of late President Ziaur Rahman, a former military chief. He rose to prominence during years of tumultuous politics after Hasina's father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country's independence leader, was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975. Zia's husband was also killed in 1981 in another military coup after he formed his political party and ruled the country as president for three years. Hasina's father led Bangladesh's independence war against Pakistan, aided by India, in 1971.
Zia’s personal physician, A.Z.M. Zahid Hossain, said Qatar’s emir arranged the special aircraft with medical facilities for the former prime minister, whose ailments include liver cirrhosis, cardiac disease and kidney problems.
Her departure follows dramatic political developments since last August, when Hasina’s 15-year rule ended. Hasina fled into exile in India as she and her close aides faced charges of killing hundreds of protesters during a mass protest movement that began in July.
Zia’s departure could create a symbolic vacuum in the country’s politics amid efforts by a student group that led the anti-Hasina protest to form a new political party. In the absence of Hasina and her secular Bangladesh Awami League party, the rise of Islamist political parties and other Islamist groups has been visible in the Muslim-majority country of 170 million people.
Zia's party has been bargaining with the Yunus-led government for an election sometime this year. Yunus said his government wants to make some major reforms before the election.
Bangladesh's ailing former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, right, leaves in a car on her way to the airport in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to travel to London for medical treatment, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
Supporters of Bangladesh's ailing former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia shout slogans before Zia left Dhaka, Bangladesh, to travel to London for medical treatment, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
FILE- Bangladesh's former prime minister and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chairperson Khaleda Zia, center, leaves after a court appearance in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Dec. 28, 2017. (AP Photo/A.M. Ahad, File)
PHOENIX (AP) — Lori Vallow Daybell, who was convicted of killing her two youngest children and conspiring to murder a romantic rival, is on trial again Monday. This time, she's accused in Arizona of conspiring to murder her estranged husband.
In opening arguments, the prosecution argued that Vallow Daybell conspired with brother Alex Cox to kill Charles Vallow and cash in on a life insurance policy, while espousing the belief that Charles was possessed by an evil spirit.
“Lori Vallow is why Alex was able to shoot Charles,” prosecutor Treena Kay said. “Lori Vallow is why Charles is dead.”
The case has drawn significant public attention in part because Vallow Daybell, 51, has doomsday-focused religious beliefs. She isn't a lawyer but has chosen to represent herself in the six-week trial.
A jury of 16 took their seats in a Phoenix courtroom, including four alternate jurors. Kay provided a detailed timeline and argued that phone records, witness testimony and forensic evidence will show that Cox’s shooting of Charles was “not self defense.”
Kay also said Vallow Daybell conspired in the killing so that she could move forward with marrying her then-boyfriend Chad Daybell, an Idaho author who wrote several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world.
Vallow Daybell has pleaded not guilty and has not spoken publicly about the details of Vallow's death. Here's what to know about the case.
Vallow was fatally shot in July 2019. Vallow Daybell then moved to Idaho with her children, Joshua “JJ” Vallow and Tylee Ryan. She married Daybell just two weeks after the death of his wife, Tammy Daybell. The children went missing for several months before their bodies were found buried in rural Idaho on Chad Daybell’s property. JJ was 7 and Tylee was 16.
Vallow Daybell is already serving three life sentences in Idaho for the children's deaths and for conspiring to kill Tammy Daybell. Chad Daybell was sentenced to death in the three killings.
Four months before he died, Charles Vallow filed for divorce from Vallow Daybell, saying she had become infatuated with near-death experiences and had claimed to have lived numerous lives on other planets.
He alleged she threatened to ruin him financially and kill him. He sought a voluntary mental health evaluation of his wife.
Police say Vallow was fatally shot by Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, when Vallow went to pick up his son at Vallow Daybell’s home in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb. Vallow Daybell’s daughter, Tylee, told police that she confronted Vallow with a baseball bat after she was awakened by yelling in the house.
Tylee said she was trying to defend her mother, but Vallow took away the bat, according to police records. Cox told police that he fired after Vallow refused to drop the bat and came after him.
Cox told investigators that Vallow Daybell and the children left the house shortly before the shooting. Investigators say she went to get fast food for her son and bought flip-flops at a pharmacy before returning home.
Cox, who claimed he acted in self-defense and wasn’t arrested in Vallow’s death, died five months later from what medical examiners said was a blood clot in his lungs. Cox's account was later called into question.
Vallow Daybell was a beautician by trade, a mother of three and a wife — five times over.
Her first marriage, to a high school sweetheart when she was 19, ended quickly. She married again in her early 20s and had a son. Then, in 2001, she married Joseph Ryan, and they had Tylee. They divorced a few years later, and Ryan died in 2018 at his home of a suspected heart attack.
Charles Vallow entered the picture several months later. Vallow and Vallow Daybell married in 2006 and later adopted JJ, but by 2019 their marriage had soured. The two were estranged but still married when Cox fatally shot Vallow.
Public interest from around the world only grew as the investigation into the missing children took several unexpected turns, each new revelation seemingly stranger than the last.
Daybell, who was once a contestant on “Wheel of Fortune,” has been the subject of a Netflix documentary and Lifetime movie.
“I want to see how she commands the courtroom,” said Bill Hurley, a spectator who jockeyed for one of about 40 seats in a packed courtroom gallery. Hurley is from the Phoenix suburb where Charles Vallow was shot in 2021, and has been closely following the case.
While representing herself, Vallow Daybell has complained about news coverage of her criminal cases, invoked her right to a speedy trial, questioned whether a government witness was truly an expert and engaged in disputes over the pre-trial exchange of evidence.
At a hearing last week, she lost a bid to strike three people from the prosecution’s witness list, including the grandmother of her adopted son. Another witness says Vallow Daybell spoke about Vallow as being “possessed” in the months before his death. When the judge asked her to argue her point, Vallow Daybell lowered her head, sighed and paused a few seconds. “Their information is not firsthand," Vallow Daybell said. "These witnesses are all coming together. They are watching everything that goes on on TV regarding this.”
If convicted in Arizona of conspiring to kill Vallow, she would face a life sentence.
Vallow Daybell will wear civilian clothing during her trial and will not be handcuffed or shackled when jurors are in the courtroom. She, however, is expected to be wearing a belt-like device under her clothes that will let a jail officer deliver an electric shock by remote control if there's a disturbance.
The Idaho investigation began at the end of 2019 when Vallow Daybell's adopted son's grandmother, worried about his welfare, reached out to police. Vallow Daybell had been evasive when asked about her two youngest children.
Chad Daybell called 911 in October 2019 to report that his wife Tammy Daybell was battling an illness and died in her sleep. Her body was later exhumed, and an autopsy determined she died of asphyxiation.
Idaho police did a welfare check on the kids in November 2019 and discovered they were missing and hadn't been seen since early September. Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell left town a short time later, eventually turning up in Hawaii without the kids. She was arrested in Hawaii in February 2020 on a warrant out of Idaho.
Defense attorneys told jurors that she was a “kind and loving mother” who happened to be interested in religion and biblical prophesies.
A witness at the Idaho trial said Vallow Daybell believes evil spirits have taken over people in her life and turned them into “zombies.”
This story has been updated to correct the attribution to a quote accusing the defendant of being the reason why Charles Vallow is dead. It was Treena Kay who was quoted, not Kay Woodcock.
FILE - A boy looks at a memorial for Tylee Ryan and Joshua "JJ" Vallow in Rexburg, Idaho, on June 11, 2020. (John Roark/The Idaho Post-Register via AP, File)
FILE - Larry Woodcock speaks to media members at the Rexburg Standard Journal Newspaper in Rexburg, Idaho on Jan. 7, 2020, while holding a reward flyer for Joshua Vallow and Tylee Ryan. (John Roark/The Idaho Post-Register via AP, File)
FILE - Lori Vallow Daybell talks with her lawyers before the jury's verdict is read at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise, Idaho on May 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Kyle Green, File)
