A Dhaka court yesterday sentenced Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, editor of “anti-Jihadist” tabloid The Weekly Blitz, to seven years of rigorous imprisonment for carrying documents provoking interreligious friction.
Metropolitan Session Judge Md Jahurul Haque passed the order in the morning.
In the order, the court said: “Although he was facing sedition charges, Shoaib was awarded seven years’ rigorous imprisonment under section 505(A) of the penal code for having inflammatory materials.”
Shoaib was out on bail in the case but facing jail term in another case.
Police arrested him on November 29, 2003 from Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport under section 54 of the criminal procedure code while he was going to attend a seminar in Tel Aviv, and filed a case against him on sedition charges on January 24, 2004.
Mohammad Abdul Hanif, the then officer-in-charge of the airport police station, alleged in the case that Shoaib was involved in “anti-state activities” such as smuggling information out the country.
Allegations against him also include promoting intercommunity tensions and publishing provocative articles in the USA Today. The CID submitted a charge-sheet against him before the court on January 9, 2005. He was remanded twice before the trial began.
