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Labour MP Tulip Siddiq is now officially on trial in Bangladesh – but she still says she has never been contacted by the authorities, never received a summons, and never been shown a shred of evidence.

The Hampstead and Highgate MP – who resigned as a Treasury minister in January after the UK’s client media decided that unproven allegations were more interesting than the truth – called the so-called proceedings “a farce” driven by “a clear political vendetta”.

Her legal team insists she has no Bangladeshi national ID card, no voter ID – and hasn’t held a passport for that country since she was a child. Prosecutors claim otherwise, waving around documents they say prove she is a Bangladeshi citizen and therefore subject to their jurisdiction.

The trial opened with corruption investigators claiming Siddiq influenced her aunt, the former prime minister Sheikh Hasina (deposed last year after mass protests), to secure a plot of land for her family in Dhaka’s lucrative Purbachal project – despite Bangladeshi rules forbidding such allocations.

They’ve tacked on extra allegations too, including supposedly acquiring another flat in the Gulshan area of the capital.

If convicted, Siddiq could face a life sentence in prison.

But the key point remains: nobody has ever served her with legal papers. Nobody has interviewed her. Nobody has responded to her legal correspondence. Nobody has even tried to meet her – even when Bangladeshi investigators came to the UK earlier this year.

Over the past year, the allegations against me have repeatedly shifted, yet I have never been contacted by the Bangladeshi authorities once,

Siddiq said on X.

If this were a genuine legal process, the authorities would have engaged with me or my legal team, responded to our formal correspondence, and presented the evidence they claim to hold. Instead, they have peddled false and vexatious allegations that have been briefed to the media but never formally put to me by investigators.

This is standard practice in Bangladeshi politics: the government of the day prosecutes members of the previous regime.

It is political score-settling dressed up as justice – and the UK’s so-called “serious” media are happy to act as stenographers for it.

Remember: Siddiq referred herself to Sir Laurie Magnus, the prime minister’s standards adviser, who found “no evidence of improprieties”, “no unusual financial arrangements”, and nothing to suggest any assets were derived from anything but legitimate means.

That didn’t matter to the wolves of the Opposition – or the client media baying for a scalp. Starmer’s Labour obliged them.

Now, Siddiq faces trial in absentia, on charges that seem to grow and mutate every time the authorities speak. The next hearing is set for August 28.

If she is eventually cleared, don’t expect the BBC or its pals to report that half as loudly as they’ve splashed these unproven claims.

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