Shafik sent to jail after remand

Journalist Shafik Rehman was sent to prison yesterday having been held in remand for 10 days in connection with an alleged plot to abduct and kill Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's son Sajeeb Wazed Joy.

Metropolitan Magistrate SM Masud Jaman passed the order after Hasan Arafat, assistant commissioner of the Detective Branch (DB) of police and investigation officer of the case, produced him before the court.

The court also ordered the jail authorities to provide Shafik with proper treatment and division in jail according to the jail code following petitions filed by the defence.

In a forwarding report submitted yesterday, the IO said Shafik had given important information about the plot.

It will be necessary to take him in remand again if law enforcers get vital clues from Mahmudur Rahman, acting editor of Bangla daily Amar Desh, who was also shown arrested in the case filed over the alleged conspiracy, the IO said. 

Therefore, Shafik needs to be kept in jail until the investigation completes, he added. 

Earlier on April 25, another Dhaka court placed Mahmudur Rahman on five-day remand in the case.

Plainclothes detectives arrested Shafik at his Eskaton Road residence in the capital on April 16. He was remanded for five days on the same day.

Three days late, police claimed that Shafik admitted to meeting four people, including the three convicted by a US court in March last year for bribing an FBI special agent for confidential information. The three are US-Bangladesh citizen Rizve Ahmed Caesar, former FBI special agent Robert Lustyik and his "contact" Johannes Thaler.

Caesar was convicted for bribing an FBI special agent to collect information about a Bangladeshi political figure. The US Justice Department did not name the figure, but it is believed to be Joy.

According to the case statement, Caesar's father Mohammad Ullah Mamun,  vice- president of the BNP's cultural wing Jasas, and some top leaders of the BNP and its allies met in the UK, US and many places in Bangladesh before September 2012 and conspired to abduct and kill the PM's son who lives in the US.

In a Facebook post on March 9 last year, Joy, information and communication technology affairs adviser to the PM, accused BNP leaders of conspiring to abduct and kill him.

Shafik, who also holds British citizenship, worked in several media outlets, including the BBC, but came in the limelight after becoming editor of the weekly Jaijaidin in the 1980s.