BD Police arrest
RSF, SA Tribune Reporter in fake case
Special
SAT Report
DHAKA:
Bangladesh Police have arrested Saleem Samad, a well known journalist
and activist for Press Freedom, who also contributed to the South
Asia Tribune and was representative of the Paris-Based organization,
Reporters sans Frontieres.
RSF
on Friday strongly condemned the pre-dawn arrest of its correspondent
for having assisted two journalists working for British television's
Channel-4, themselves arrested on 25 November. There has been
no news of Samad since his arrest at 3 a.m. in Dhaka.
Another
journalist was arrested yesterday in Chittagong for the same reason.
In all, at least six persons are currently detained in this case.
These
arrests have come as the Government of Prime Minister Khaleda
Zia cracked down on a team of British TV Channel-4 accusing them
of trying to tarnish the image of Bangladesh as a fundamentalist
country supporting terrorism. No evidence has been produced to
substantiate the charge.
Editor
of the SA Tribune, Shaheen Sehbai earlier in a letter
protested strongly to the Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia
and demanded the immediate release of Saleem Samad and withdrawal
of all cases against him and other British journalists.
"Reporters
Without Borders is very disturbed by the arrest of its correspondent,
who is a very professional journalist and a longstanding press
freedom activist," the organization's secretary-general,
Robert Ménard, said in a letter to Prime Minister Begum
Khaleda Zia. "We are calling on the international community,
especially the European Union, to take a very firm position in
favour of the release of these journalists," Ménard
said.
The
organization urged Prime Minister Zia to intervene to ensure that
all six detainees are released and that the authorities, who are
portraying them as "dangerous conspirators" without
any supporting evidence, drop the charges of "sedition."
The
authorities have given no information about Samad since his arrest
by plain-clothes police at the Dhaka home of a friend, but he
is believed to be detained in one of the buildings of the Detective
Branch in Dhaka. His arrest was made possible by the indiscriminate
telephone tapping being practised by the police. His family, whose
home was searched, had to go into hiding after receiving many
threats. A police officer even threatened to arrest Samad's son.
Sumi
Khan, a correspondent for the weekly Shaptahik 2000 in the southeastern
city of Chittagong, was also detained by police on November 28
for having met with the Channel-4 journalists, who were preparing
a report on terrorism. Other journalists in both Dhaka and the
provinces have told Reporters Without Borders that they also fear
being arrested for having met with the British TV crew.
The
police have been obstructing justice ever since arresting the
Channel-4 crew, British reporter Zaiba Malik and Italian cameraman
Bruno Sorrentino, together with their interpreter Pricilla Raj
and their driver Mujib, as they were on the point of crossing
the border into India near the eastern city of Benapole on 25
November. The police have still not given lawyers or diplomats
access to the journalists. A police officer who gave information
to the press has been removed from the case. On 26 November, a
Dhaka court ordered that the two foreign journalists be detained
for five days.
