Shafik Rehman remanded in custody again

Journalist Shafik Rehman was again remanded in custody for five days on Friday for interrogation in a case filed for ‘hatching conspiracy to abduct and kill prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy in the United States.’
Metropolitan magistrate Mahmudul Hasan passed the order after the Detective Branch of police produced the 82-year-old journalist, also a pro-Bangladesh Nationalist Party intellectual who holds a British passport, before the court.
Earlier, Shafik was taken in custody for five days for interrogation in the same case after he was arrested at his Eskaton house in Dhaka on April 16.
Detective Branch senior assistant police commissioner Hasan Arafat, also the investigation officer of the case, produced Shafik before the court, after interrogating him in custody for five days, with an application stating that Shafik needed to be interrogated in custody for seven more days.
Arafat told the court that a file containing important information was already seized from Shafik’s house.
He said Shafik admitted to investigators that he held several meetings in the United States with some BNP leaders and a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent at the house of BNP leader Mohammd Ullah Mamun.
Besides, Shafik met several BNP leaders in Dhaka returning from the United States and the investigators needed to interrogate Shafik to know about the BNP leaders with whom Shafik met in Dhaka, Arafat told the court.
Shafik’s lawyer Sanaullah Miah argued that Shafik had already been interrogated in custody for five days although he was not named in the first information report and he should be remanded on bail instead of in custody.
He further argued that there was no case of plotting to abduct and kill Joy in the United States as claimed by the government, based on which Shafik was arrested, and that the [bribery] case in the United States USA was already been disposed of.
Hasan Arafat told New Age that Shafik provided significant information during interrogation.
‘He, however, did not provide all the information,’ Hasan said.
On May 31, 2015, detective inspector Fazlur Rahman filed a general diary with Ramna police station stating that ‘high-ups of BNP and its allies hatched a plot to abduct and kill Joy in the United States.’
Fazlur filed the case on August 3, 2015 accusing BNP-backed cultural front Jatiyatabadi Samajik Sangskritik Sangstha vice-president Mohammad Ullah Mamun and unnamed high-ups of BNP and its allies at home and abroad of hatching the ‘conspiracy.’
The first information report said that Mohammad Ullah Mamun was in the conspiracy as his son Rizvi Ahmed Caesar along with two US citizens including a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent was jailed in the United States for bribery to collect information about a Bangladeshi politician.
Retired Prof Mahmuda Begum, mother of Daily Amar Desh acting editor Mahmudur Rahman, urged the US authorities to officially make public documents about the alleged plot for abduction and killing of Sajeeb Wazed Joy for the transparency of the conspiracy.
She made the urge it at a press conference in Dhaka on Friday.
She also said Police claimed that American justice department had given information to Bangladesh authorities over the alleged abduction plot.
The US government and American embassy in Bangladesh should disclose it to the people as the government was implecating innocent people in the case, she said.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net