In a case involving the alleged “kidnapping with intent to murder conspiracy” against Sajeeb Wazed Joy, the son of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, Mahmudur Rahman, the acting editor of the Amar Desh newspaper, has been granted bail.
The ruling was made on Thursday by Judge As Shams Jaglu of the Dhaka Metropolitan Session.
For his bail, attorney Syed Joynul Abedin Mezbaha filed an appeal. At the time, the defendant wasn’t there.
In addition to appealing the sentence, we requested bail. Attorney Mejbah stated that the judge granted bail after accepting the appeal.
Mahmudur, the former editor of the Jai Jai Din newspaper Shafik Rehman, Mohammad Ullah Mamun, the vice president of the pro-BNP group Jatiyatabadi Samajik Sangskritik Sangstha, his son Rizve Ahmed Caesar, and Mizanur Rahman Bhuiyan, a US-based businessman, were all given seven years in prison by a Dhaka court on August 17, 2023.
Mamun, a foreigner residing in the United States, resides with his family in Connecticut’s Fairfield County.
Joy resides in Virginia with his family and is the son of Sheikh Hasina, the head of the Awami League.
In 2015, a New York court convicted Rizve of bribing an FBI official to obtain classified information and sentenced him to three years in prison.
On August 3, 2015, Bangladesh Police opened a case at the Paltan Police Station regarding a purported “plot to abduct Joy.”
The charges brought against the accused in 2018 state that sometime before September 2011, BNP stalwart Mamun and other prominent party leaders and supporters met at their office in Dhaka’s Naya Paltan, New York, and the UK to devise a scheme to kill Joy after kidnapping him.
On February 22, 2018, a court issued an indictment against at least five suspects.
In the case, Shafik Rehman and Mahmudur Rahman were mentioned for allegedly “giving orders” to kidnap and murder Joy.