Bangladesh magazine editor gets 7-year jail in sedition case

DHAKA, Jan. 9 (NsNewsWire) — A court in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka has awarded seven-year rigorous imprisonment to an editor of a weekly magazine in a decade old sedition case.
Judge Md Jahirul Haque of the Court of Metropolitan Sessions Judge handed down the verdict against Salauddin Shoib Choudhury, the editor of English weekly Blitz, on Thursday.
His brother Sohel Choudhury told reporters that they will move the apex court against the sentence.
Choudhury, who is now behind bar in another forgery case, was arrested on Nov. 29 in 2003 from capital Dhaka’s Shahjalal International Airport (then Zia International Airport) on his way to Israel with a copy of a speech to be presented at a Tel Aviv seminar.
In January 2004 police filed the case against Choudhury charging him with sedition and hurting Islamic religious sentiments.
He was freed on bail in April 2005.
But Choudhury was again arrested and sent to jail in another case in November 2012.
The arrest came days after his weekly reportedly cooked up a story of romance between the then Pakistan’s foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar and the Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.
Khar’s husband has rubbished rumours about his 34-year-old wife’s alleged affair with ruling Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal.
Feroze Gulzar, a businessman, reportedly said the rumours were part of a campaign to malign Khar and do not merit to be commented upon.
Pakistan’s foreign office had also lodged a strong protest with its Bangladeshi counterpart over the tabloid’s reports .
Choudhury is facing charges of sedition, treason, blasphemy and espionage for attempting to travel to Israel in violation of Bangladeshi Passport Act which forbids citizens from visiting countries with which Bangladesh does not maintain diplomatic relations.