A Dhaka court on Thursday sentenced five people, including senior journalist Shafik Rehman and former acting editor of Amar Desh newspaper Mahmudur Rahman, to seven years in jail over a case filed in connection with the abduction and attempted murder of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's son Sajeeb Wazed Joy.
The court of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Asaduzzaman Noor passed the order on Thursday.
The other three convicts are Mohammad Ullah Mamun, vice-president of Jatiyatabadi Samajik Sangskritik Sangstha, and his son Rizvi Ahmed Caesar; and Mizanur Rahman Bhuiyan, a businessman.
They were also fined Tk5,000 each, in default of which they will have to serve three more months in jail.
According to the case details, Shafik, Mahmudur, Mamun, and several other leaders of BNP and its allied political parties had met in several places – both in Dhaka and in New York and the UK – in 2011 and plotted to abduct and kill Joy in the US.
Shafik had also allegedly met with Mamun’s son Caesar, the then FBI special agent Robert Lustyik, and Lustyik’s friend Johannes Thaler in the UK, the US, and Bangladesh in 2012 to finalize the plot, police said.