A Bangladeshi court Tuesday sent a key BNP leader to jail on several charges of violence and sabotage during the main Opposition party’s violent campaign against the government earlier this year.
A Bangladeshi court Tuesday sent a key BNP leader to jail on several charges of violence and sabotage during the main Opposition party’s violent campaign against the government earlier this year.
“Rejected,” metropolitan magistrate Maruf Hossain pronounced as BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir’s lawyers pleaded for his bail as he appeared in the dock at the crowded court complex here.
Mr Hossain ordered Alamgir, 67, to be jailed saying it was beyond his authority to grant bail since the Supreme Court had already denied the BNP leader’s plea seeking extension of his bail period.
Alamgir was earlier arrested in January when his Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) launched a violent nationwide anti-government campaign coinciding with the first anniversary of the 2014 general elections which it had boycotted.
He, however, secured bail on July 13 from the Supreme Court initially for six weeks on medical grounds which also allowed him to be treated abroad.
Meanwhile, about 1,000 Bangladeshi authors and teachers marched through the streets of the capital on Tuesday, asserting their right to free speech days after a suspected Islamist group attacked writers and publishers critical of religious militancy.
Bangladesh is in the throes of a violent struggle between hardline groups bent on turning the Muslim-majority nation into a Sharia-based theocracy on the one hand, and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina determined to root out extremism on the other.
On Saturday, a publisher was hacked to death in his office in Dhaka by men wielding sharp weapons.
Despite the climate of fear caused by the attacks that follow the killings of four secularist bloggers this year, writers turned out in large numbers for the rally in Dhaka.
“No one is safe. First they killed bloggers. Now they are targeting publishers,” said Khaledur Rahman, an author who ishimself facing a death threat.
