A prominent Bangladeshi opposition newspaper editor, on bail for charges of plotting to kill the Prime Minister’s son, has been stopped from flying abroad despite having court clearance to travel, his aide said on Thursday.
Shafik Rehman, a British citizen, was scheduled to fly to London to see his ailing wife Taleya Rehman there but the immigration police turned him away from the airport, a personal aide to the 81-year-old editor told reporters.
Mr. Rehman was freed on bail in September last year on a Supreme Court order, five months after he was arrested on charges of involvement in the plot to kill Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy who lives in the United States. His aide Sajib Onasis said authorities returned Mr. Rehman’s British passport last week after the high court granted him permission to visit abroad to see his wife but the immigration police said they were not advised about the clearance yet.
Just paperwork: police
An immigration police officer, however, said the officials prevented him from flying abroad as they required time to verify the court papers produced by Mr. Rehman and “once the procedure is done he will be able to catch the next flight immediately.”
Mr. Rehman is an adviser and speech writer of former Prime Minister and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader chief Khaleda Zia and now edits a Bengali monthly tabloid magazine called Mouchake Dhil . He was formerly the editor of Jaijaidin , a popular Bengali-language newspaper, and rose to prominence in the 1980s as a vocal critic of former military ruler Hussain Mohammad Ershad. He was arrested in April 2016 after a U.S. court convicted an expatriate BNP leader’s son, along with two other Americans for bribing a former FBI agent to get confidential information on Mr. Joy with the intent to ‘scare,’ ‘kidnap’ and ‘hurt’ him.
Police said during interrogation Mr. Rehman had admitted he held several meetings with those convicts and handed them over the “confidential FBI documents.”
But Rehman’s wife at that time claimed he had collected those documents as an ‘investigative journalist’ to write a report.
