Malaysian High Court on Thursday granted a stay on deportation order against MA Quayum, a senior BNP leader.
The case was heard before Judge K Muniandy on Thursday morning, reports The Straits Times.
MA Quayum was arrested in a joint operation between the Malaysian police and Bangladeshi intelligence on January 12.
He had been staying in Malaysia under a Second Home program and as a UNHCR-registered refugee.
Malaysian human rights body Suara Rakyat Malaysia’s Executive Director Sevan Doraisamy in a statement said the arrest and detention were unwarranted, as Quayum was a UNHCR-recognised refugee with an active UNHCR card.
"We demand the Immigration Department to fully comply with this court order and immediately cease any plans to deport Quayum. The reprehensible act of defying the temporary court order and forcibly deporting asylum seekers that was cruelly executed three years ago should not be repeated," he said.
In 2015, refuting the government’s claim of masterminding Dhaka-based Italian aid worker Cesare Tavella’s murder, Dhaka city BNP leader MA Quayum told Dhaka Tribune that he was being set up.
“I have not been in the country for six to seven months. I do not know anything. I am being put on the spot to frame BNP,” he told the Dhaka Tribune.
Tavella, 50, at the time a project manager of Profitable Opportunities for Food Security (Proofs), a project of the Netherlands-based organization ICCO Cooperation, was gunned down on the pavement of Road 90 in Gulshan-2 on September 28, 2015.
After the murder, the Middle East-based Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, which the government dismissed.
Following this, a new wing of the banned militant group Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) was found involved in over two dozen fatal attacks carried out against religious minorities and foreigners, including the grisly attack on Holey Artisan Bakery in the capital.