Shafik arrested for plotting to kill me: Joy
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s son and her ICT adviser Sajeeb Wazed on Saturday claimed the government has arrested journalist Shafik Rehman “for his involvement in a plot to kidnap and kill me in the US.”
In a Facebook status posted at 10:15pm local time, Sajeeb also claimed that he is always under a threat of being killed because of the opposition party BNP.
Sajeeb Wazed, aka Joy, termed the BNP a “violent criminal bent”.
In an oblique reference, PM’s son also said Jamaat , with which BNP is allied, is the “largest fundamentalist party in the country” and has “direct ties to ISIS.”
“How often do you actually get someone trying to kill you? In my case, apparently more often than even I am aware of. It's not because I'm a criminal or even a bad guy.
It just so happens that my mother is in politics in Bangladesh and I help her from time to time. It is also because our opposition party is of a particularly violent criminal bent and is allied with the largest fundamentalist party in the country with direct ties to ISIS,” read the FB status.
About Shafik’s arrest, he wrote, “Today our government arrested a senior "journalist" and opposition BNP leader Shafik Rehman for his involvement in a plot to kidnap and kill me in the US.”
In order to justify his claim, Sajeeb mentioned a US court verdict of 2015 in which a former FBI agent Robert Lustyik, his friend Johannes Thaler and Thaler’s acquaintance Rizve Ahmed, aka Caesar, was sentenced to serve in prison for accepting and soliciting bribes in exchange for
providing internal law enforcement documents and other confidential information about a prominent citizen of Bangladesh for use by a political rival.
Giving the link of the court verdict up on the FB, Sajeeb claimed that he is the person whom the US court mentioned with the term “prominent citizen of Bangladesh”.
He apparently claimed that Rizve Ahmed is the son of a US BNP leader. “A US BNP leader's son, a former FBI agent and another American friend of both are already serving time in the US for this plot. You can read about that case directly from the US DOJ's press release. I'm not sure about the "prominent" part but I am the "citizen of Bangladesh" mentioned there.”
The PM’s ICT adviser claimed, “The evidence against "journalist" Shafik Rehman comes directly from this case.”
The release of the US Department of Justice, however, did not contain the name of Shafik or give any hints in this connection.
Sajeeb also declined to call Shafik as a journalist rather called him as a BNP leader. “Note I put the word journalist in quotes because once
you're involved in trying to kidnap and kill someone I believe you have changed your career path from journalist to criminal. The BNP runs a mid-career course for that sort of thing.”
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