The International Crimes Tribunal 2 yesterday issued a pre-contempt-of-court notice upon the New York Times, a USA-based prestigious daily, to explain its stance over its recent editorial asking for overturning convict contemnor journalist David Bergman’s sentence.
On its own motion, the three-member tribunal, headed by Justice Obaidul Hassan, passed the order asking the US daily to submit its explanation by February 20 through Bangladesh mission in New York as the impugned editorial titled “Muzzling Speech in Bangladesh” published on December 23, 2014 tends to demean the judiciary of a sovereign country, Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, the tribunal kept with the record for further order on the controversial statement made by 49 noted citizens expressing concern over its judgment that punished British-origin journalist David Bergman for contempt of court and their conduct expressing ‘apology’ and ‘regret’ on compliance.
On December 20 last year, the Prothom Alo, a vernacular daily, published the statement titled “50 citizens express concern punishing Bergman.” Later, rights activist Khushi Kabir, one of the signatories, retracted her name from the impugned statement.
Later, the tribunal asked the Prothom Alo editor to submit before it a copy of the full text of the statement over its judgment against David Bergman, now working at the daily New Age here, for contempt of court.
On December 2 last year, the tribunal after a lengthy hearing convicted David Bergman, also son in-law of noted jurist Dr Kamal Hossain, and sentenced him to a symbolic jail term with a fine and accordingly the convict-contemnor served the sentence and paid the fine.