Dhaka, Aug. 12 -- "There's no extradition treaty, I looked that up myself actually," says Tulip Siddiq, the MP for Hampstead and Highgate and a Treasury minister until her resignation in January.

Just over a week ago, Siddiq, 42, a Keir Starmer loyalist, learned via a journalist who had contacted her lawyer that she had been formally indicted in Bangladesh for corruption.

She has been charged with using her influence as the niece of Sheikh Hasina, the ousted prime minister of the south Asian country, to secure a plot of land for her mother, brother and sister in Purbachal in Dhaka, the capital. "Completely absurd," Siddiq says in her first interview about the saga.

A trial date has been set for 11 August for her and more than 20 others...