A Tangail Court has sent Md Rasel bin Sattar, arrested for circulating al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri’s audio message in Bangladesh, to 10-day police custody for interrogation.
Judicial Magistrate Court judge Shahadat Hossain on Wednesday granted police the remand in one of the cases filed against Rasel under the Information and Communication Technology Act.The case accuses him of circulating ‘false and defamatory information and photographs’ against the government and its head. The second case accuses him of sedition.
The case investigation officer, Tangail Sadar Police Station Sub-Inspector Abdullah Al Tayabir had produced Rasel in the court and sought 15-day remand in each of the two cases.
The judge remanded Rasel for 10 days in the first case and said the hearing of the second case will take place later.
There was no lawyer for Rasel in court during the hearing and no bail petition on his behalf was moved.
Rasel bin Sattar, a final-year student of Tangail Textile Institute, was arrested by Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) from Tangail’s Majhiparha on the early hours of Tuesday.
Substantial amount of Jihadi literature was found in his possession.
Rasel told media later at the RAB headquarters in Dhaka that he circulated the Zawahiri clip by sharing and positing it in different social networking websites after he found it on a blog called ‘Dawahilallah’.
The youth said he is a blogger who runs several extremist blogs such as ‘Amar Bhabna’ and ‘Amar Desh’ and is an administrator of pro-Jamaat Facebook page ‘Basherkella-2.’
He also works as a web developer. But he, however, denied any association with al-Qaeda.
In the audio-clip, al-Qaeda chief al-Zawahiri calls Bangladesh ‘a huge prison’ and asks Muslims in the country to start an uprising against the ‘secular’ government and other enemies of Islam.
RAB had handed Rasel over to Tangail Sadar police on Tuesday night after RAB-12 Deputy Assistant Director Kamal Hossain lodged the two cases.
RAB media wing director ATM Habibur Rahman had told reporters that under the circumstances they suspect Rasel was also involved in promoting activities of international militant organisations in Bangladesh. -bdnews24.com
