When Sheikh Hasina led the Awami League back to power in the 2008 general election, one of her party's successful parliamentary candidates carried one of the most controversial backgrounds in Bangladesh's political history.

Captain (Retd) Gias Uddin Ahmed, a former Bangladesh Army officer convicted by a military court-martial in connection with the 1981 assassination of President and BNP founder Ziaur Rahman, was nominated by the Awami League from the Mymensingh-10 (Gafargaon) constituency. 

He won the election and took oath as a member of the Ninth Jatiya Sangsad in January 2009.

The nomination immediately became a politically contentious decision of the election. The BNP repeatedly cited it as evidence of what it described as the Awami League's double standards over one of Bangladesh's defining political assassinations. 

The Awami League, meanwhile, maintained that Gias Uddin Ahmed had completed the judicial process, served the sentence imposed upon him and therefore enjoyed the constitutional right to contest elections and participate in politics.

The assassination of Ziaur Rahman remains a consequential episode in Bangladesh's post-independence history. In the early hours of May 30, 1981, the president was killed inside the Chittagong Circuit House after a group of rebel army officers launched an abortive coup. 

The mutiny was widely associated with Major General Abul Manzoor, then commander of the Chittagong-based 24th Infantry Division, although historians continue to debate aspects of the events leading to Zia's death.

The military responded with one of the largest court-martial proceedings in the country's history. A General Court Martial tried 18 army officers over the failed uprising and the assassination. 

Thirteen officers were sentenced to death and later executed, while five others received prison terms. Gias Uddin Ahmed was among those sentenced to imprisonment rather than death.

Historical accounts consistently place Gias Uddin Ahmed among the officers convicted following the failed Chittagong uprising. In his landmark 1986 book Bangladesh: A Legacy of Blood, veteran journalist Anthony Mascarenhas identifies then-Major Gias Uddin Ahmed as the second-in-command of the 11 East Bengal Regiment and lists him among the officers convicted by the General Court Martial convened after the assassination of President Ziaur Rahman. 

Mascarenhas records that while thirteen officers were executed, Gias Uddin Ahmed survived after receiving a prison sentence.

Following his release, Gias Uddin Ahmed gradually returned to civilian life. A decorated freedom fighter and recipient of the Bir Protik gallantry award, he had also been involved in Bangladesh Chhatra League politics during his student years at Gafargaon Government College before joining the army. 

Years later, he entered mainstream politics through the Awami League.

His political rehabilitation culminated in 2008 when Sheikh Hasina selected him as the Awami League's parliamentary candidate for Mymensingh-10. The decision effectively transformed a former military officer convicted in one of Bangladesh's most infamous political cases into a ruling-party lawmaker.

After winning the election, Gias Uddin Ahmed became a member of the parliamentary standing committees on the Ministry of Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

His parliamentary career, however, was repeatedly overshadowed by controversy. In 2012, he was accused of firing a licensed firearm toward protesters in Mymensingh after images and video of the incident appeared in the media, triggering widespread criticism.

The following year, several newspapers reported that during a heated exchange with officials at the Ministry of Education, he referred to his past in the Zia assassination case while making threatening remarks. The reports generated another wave of controversy.

Amid mounting criticism and changing local political dynamics, the Awami League denied him renomination in the 2014 general election, replacing him in Gafargaon with Fahmi Golandaz Babel. He gradually disappeared from the forefront of national politics.

Gias Uddin Ahmed died on September 5, 2022, while undergoing treatment at a hospital in India.

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