BNP Acting Chairman Tarique Rahman will return to Bangladesh from the UK on 25 December, ending his 17 years of exile in London.

BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir made the announcement at a press conference held at the party chairperson’s Gulshan office in the capital on Friday night.

Earlier, a meeting of the party’s standing committee was held at the office, which discussed his homecoming. Tarique Rahman chaired the meeting, joining it virtually from London.

Tarique Rahman was arrested following the 1/11 political changeover in 2007. After securing release from jail in 2008, he left for the United Kingdom for medical treatment with his family and has lived there since.

Following the fall of Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government on 5 August last year in a student-public uprising, courts overturned several convictions against Tarique Rahman, while he was acquitted in other cases through legal processes.

Since then, discussions about his return had intensified, though no specific date had been confirmed until now.

Speculation about his immediate return grew when BNP chairperson and former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia’s health deteriorated. At the time, Tarique Rahman wrote on his verified Facebook page from London, expressing his desire to be by his mother’s side but noting that the decision was not solely his to make due to political realities.