Bangladesh editor sentenced to seven years in jail for attempted Israel trip

A newspaper editor in Bangladesh was sentenced to seven years in prison after being found guilty of trying to travel to Israel.

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, 48, publisher and editor of the English-language Weekly Blitz, an anti-jihadist tabloid, was found guilty on Jan. 9 of “harming the country’s interests” through pro-Israel articles and for attempting to board a flight in November 2003 to Bangkok with connections to Israel.

He was planning to attend a conference in Tel Aviv to present a paper on the emergence of Islamic militancy in Bangladesh, according to the French news agency AFP.

Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country, does not have diplomatic relations with Israel and bans its citizens from traveling to the Jewish state.

Choudhury’s attorney said he would appeal the verdict.

In a 2012 interview with JTA on his arrest and its aftermath, Choudhury said, “I was tortured with electric shocks. They put nails in my ear. They broke my kneecap with a hockey stick. I was interrogated for 15 days and not allowed to bathe.

“They told me, ‘confess you’re a Zionist spy. Otherwise, why do you support Judaism?’ I said that I’m a good Muslim, and a good Muslim must trust the Jews and Christians. And I’m proud of that.”

Source: JTA.org

3 COMMENTS

  1. This guy is working for the Israelis for over a decade. He is bad mouthing Bangladesh like the Awami League people are doing. This news is like a concerted effort by the Awami League and the Indian government against the people of Bangladesh. This gentleman should be hanged.

  2. Renowned late Abul Mansur Ahmed (Saily Star Editor Mr. Mahfuz Anam’s father) wrote in one of his satires, cow hide would be sold under the sign-board ‘Jatio Go-raksha Samity’ (National Society for Saving the Cow). The main idea behind it is ‘customers will be taken by surprise’. The same thing is happening here in Bangladesh. On the one hand we see how our Holy Prophet is being blasphamed by some apostates with Muslim names, and on the other what a show being staged in his honor! The main objective of these renegades is to eat away the fabric of the society and the nation as a whole, making it most vulnerable to foreign intervention and erasing its identity as a Muslim country. And every sane man with minimum common sense will understand why should Bangladesh maintain a separate, independent identity and if it fails to do that the international border will be absolutely irrelevant.

  3. Are you people delusional? Or are you just plain stupid??”- I think a combination of both. “Foreign intervention & raising its identity as a Muslim country” is proof of your ignorance gentlemen, let me remind you Bangladesh is a secular country & if we knew how to comport ourselves as a civilised nation then foreigners would not have to intervene to remind us to behave, like ill mannered children! No one is interested in this drowning overpopulated errant nation full of ignorant greedy idiots. We are irrelevant in the global context so please wake up fro your delusions of grandeur.

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