Swedish police receive complaint against Tasneem Khalil
Swedish police authorities have received a “submission of complaint” against Netra News editor Tasneem Khalil, said leaders of All European Awami League on Thursday.
The petitioners claimed that they made the submission against Khalil for "a consistent effort to peddle a wave of disinformation and slanders against the government of Bangladesh through the offshore portal."
All European Awami League president M Nazrul Islam, All European AL unit secretary Mujibur Rahman, AL leaders Mahfuzur Rahman Bhuyian, Hedayet ul Islam Shelly, among others, filed the submission with the Sweden police.
“We’ve spent around 55 minutes there. They’ve received our submission today,” said M Nazrul Islam, adding that they have called for an intervention to hold Khalil responsible for what he says “such misadventures that coincide with a similar effort unleashed by a group of BNP activists and radical Islamists.”
Using the website, YouTube, and Facebook pages of the offshore outlet Netra News, Tasneem Khalil, an editor of NN now residing in Sweden, has been playing a key role, masquerading as a journalist, in the systematic, coordinated and ceaseless manner of "spreading smears and rumors to confuse the public and often casting as persons against the prime minister and her family members,” according to the submission.
When the country was witnessing a steady decline in the pandemic since the virus was first detected in Bangladesh on 19 March, 2020, Khalil yet again used his Facebook page and offshore portal to spread a complete rumor — “without government action over 50,000 may die in Covid in Bangladesh,” the submission reads.
In reality, over the year 2019 as the government was trying its best to arrange treatment for people, but again slandering the government with cooked-up lies like — “without government action”— at the time of pandemic appears as no credible work of journalism rather like behaving like an anti-government activist, according to the submission.
However, till date, the global death toll in Bangladesh is “well-documented” and ironically no further claims are posted by Tasneem Khalil either from his Facebook or with his portal, they said.