Prominent Bangladeshi pro-opposition newspaper editor Mahmudur Rahman was released yesterday after spending more than three years in jail on charges of sedition and inciting religious tension.
Rahman, 63, who faces charges in a multitude of cases from torching vehicles to a plot to kill the prime minister’s son, was arrested in April 2013 in the wake of a nationwide crackdown on the opposition.
“He was released today after he got bail in the last of his 78 cases,” Rahman’s lawyer Zainul Abedin Mesbah said.
Rahman was the editor of mass circulated Bengali daily Amar Desh, which was shut down by the government.
He was accused of publishing false and derogatory information that incited religious tension in the Muslim-majority country after his daily published a series of reports accusing secular bloggers of Islamophobia.
His release came some two months after another prominent pro-opposition magazine editor Shafik Rehman was also freed from jail.
The 81-year-old British citizen
was a former speechwriter for the main opposition leader – the current premier’s archrival – and was released spending nearly five months in jail.
Mahmudur Rahman, centre, celebrates his release on bail from Kashimpur prison in Gazipur, near Dhaka, yesterday.
