The 81-year-old pro-opposition magazine editor arrested and sent to five-day police custody was today interrogated for his alleged involvement in a plot to "abduct and murder" Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's son in the US.
Shafik Rehman, the editor of popular Bengali monthly magazine Mouchake Dhil and also a British citizen, was approached by three men in plain clothes who identified themselves as reporters and asked him to accompany them, said his wife Taleya Rehman, a former BBC journalist.
Rehman worked as a speech-writer for former prime minister Khaleda Zia and his arrest is the latest in a series of cases that have sparked concern over freedom of speech.
Police said Rehman was found involved in a plot to "abduct and murder" Hasina's son and Information and Communications Technology advisor Sajib Wajed Joy last year from the US last year in the US.
A Dhaka court yesterday ordered him to be remanded in police custody for five days for interrogation.
"He (Rehman) has been arrested on specific allegation and the matter is now under investigation. If he is found innocent, he will be released and if the allegation is proved, trial proceedings will run against him," Law Minister Anisul Huq said.
Information Minister Hassanul Haq Inu said Rehman was arrested on specific criminal charges having no links to journalism.
Police said their case statement suggested that Rehman was one of several suspects who met in the UK, the US and Dhaka and other parts of the country before September 2012 and conspired to abduct and kill the premier's son.
Police yesterday said that Rehman, who has also worked with the BBC, was arrested in connection with a sedition case lodged with the Paltan police station in Dhaka last year.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), meanwhile, condemned the arrest and demanded Rehman's immediate release.
BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said the government arrested him to divert peoples' attention from its numerous failures.
"The incident proves that there is no democracy in the country and nobody has the right to express his free opinion," Alamgir said.
He is the third pro-opposition journalist to have been arrested by the government. Two other journalists associated with Bangladesh's leading Bengali and English newspapers have also been booked for defamation and sedition.
Rehman has formerly served as a speech-writer for two-time former prime minister and opposition leader Zia who is also the chief of BNP.
He shot to fame for his criticism of the government during General H M Ershad's dictatorship through in his weekly column after becoming editor of Jaijaidin weekly in the 1980s. Rehman had to leave Bangladesh facing the wrath of Ershad but returned after he was dethroned.
