A Dhaka court yesterday placed journalist Shafik Rehman on five-day fresh remand in a case filed over an alleged plot to kidnap and kill prime minister’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy.
Metropolitan Magistrate Mahmudul Hasan passed the order after the Detective Branch (DB) of police had produced Shafik with seven-day remand prayer on completion of his five-day remand on Thursday.
Sanaullah Miah, lawyer of Shafik, told The Daily Star that they prayed for not granting the fresh remand, saying that Shafik is an aged person and claiming that the journalist was not involved in any plot.
He alleged that police forced Shafik to make false statements about the conspiracy.
“Police claim they have seized some papers from Shafik’s house. But they did not give any list or say what the papers are about,” he added.
Earlier in the day, Mashruqure Rahman Khaled, deputy commissioner of DB (south division) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told The Daily Star, “He [Shafik Rehman] needs to be interrogated further as we have got important information from him.”
On April 16, plainclothes detectives arrested pro-BNP intellectual Shafik Rehman from his Eskaton house in the capital. The same day, he was placed on five-day remand by a Dhaka court in connection with the case.
Police on Tuesday claimed that Shafik admitted having more than one meeting with those in the US allegedly involved in the plot against Joy.
DMP Additional Commissioner Monirul Islam on that day said he (Shafik) admitted meeting four persons, including the three convicted by a US court over bribing an FBI special agent to collect confidential information. They are US-Bangladesh citizen Rizve Ahmed Caesar, former FBI special agent Robert Lustyik and his “contact” Johannes Thaler.
Shafik, who also holds British citizenship, worked in various media outlets, including the BBC, but came in the limelight after becoming editor of the weekly Jaijaidin in the 1980s.
According to the case statement, Caesar’s father Mamun and some top leaders of the BNP and its allies met in the UK, the US and various places of Bangladesh before September 2012 and conspired to abduct and kill the PM’s son.
In March last year, Caesar was convicted by a US court for bribing an FBI special agent to collect information regarding a Bangladeshi political figure.
The US Justice Department did not name the figure, but it is believed to be Joy.
In a Facebook post on March 9 last year, Joy, also ICT affairs adviser to the prime minister, accused BNP leaders of conspiring to abduct and kill him.
