Eminent Bangladeshi photographer placed on police remand for TV interview

A court in Bangladesh on Monday remanded internationally acclaimed photographer and activist Shahidul Alam for seven days in police custody for interrogation, reported New Age, a leading English language daily published from Dhaka.

On Sunday night, a band of plainclothes police picked up Shahidul from his house at Dhanmondi few hours after he had given an interview to Doha-based television channel Al Jazeera on the ongoing student protests for road safety.

The court on Monday passed the remand order in a case under controversial Section 57 of Information and Communication Technology Act filed with police few hours after his arrest.

Shahidul was produced before the court bear-footed seeking him to be interrogated in police custody.

Police said Shahidul was arrested in the case filed under section 57(2) of the ICT Act on charge of spreading ‘imaginary propaganda against the government’ on his Facebook page that ‘triggered panic among public and caused deterioration of law and order.’

Shahidul’s counsel Jyotirmay Barua asked the court to hear the version of the accused and the court allowed him to speak. ‘I was hit (in custody). I bled,’ Shahidul told the court.

Shahidul said that they kept him handcuffed all the night and hurled abusive words. Few of them also quizzed him with dignity citing his international fame, Shahidul told the court.

Another defence counsel Sara Hossain argued that they came to know about Shahidul’s whereabouts almost 15 hours after he was taken from the house.

When he was being taken from one court to another, Shahidul told the press that his captors had washed his blood-stained punjabi and then made him to wear it again. He was barefooted when he was produced before a court wrongly and the family members bought a rubber flip-flop for him.

As his counsel asked what happened to his shoes, he said he cannot say what happened to those as the detectives had whisked him off his flat onto a microbus.

‘I was hit [in custody]. [They] washed my blood-stained punjabi and then made me wear it again,’ said Shahidul Alam as he was taken to a court for remand hearing.

The Amnesty International in a statement on Monday said that Bangladesh authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Shahidul Alam.

‘Shahidul Alam must be immediately and unconditionally released. There is no justification whatsoever for detaining anyone for solely peacefully expressing their views. His arrest marks a dangerous escalation of a crackdown by the government that has seen the police and vigilantes unleash violence against student protestors,’ said Amnesty International’s deputy South Asia director Omar Waraich.

PEN International also condemned the arrest of writer and photographer Shahidul Alam and called for his immediate and unconditional release.

In the interim, PEN called on the Bangladeshi authorities to ensure his wellbeing and that he was not subjected to ill-treatment while in detention.