Mother offers to go to jail for Mahmudur Rahman's release

Mahmudur Rahman's mother Mahmuda Begum has claimed that her son is innocent and has made an impassioned plea for his release.

The ‘Amar Desh’ daily’s acting editor is charged with plotting the abduction of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's son Sajeeb Ahmed Wazed Joy.

In a voice choked with emotion, she insisted on Friday that the allegations against her son were baseless.

The octogenarian mother offered to go to prison in return for her son’s release.

"I appeal to the honourable prime minister to release my son and send me to jail instead...", she said at a press conference held at the National Press Club.

She questioned the credibility of the charges brought against Mahmudur.

Mahmuda wondered which right-thinking person in Bangladesh would believe that Shafik Rehman and Mahmudur could have planned the abduction and murder of Joy in the US.

"Are they both absolutely devoid of common sense?" she asked at the media call held under the banner of "Amar Desh".

Mahmudur was the energy adviser to the 2001-6 BNP government.

Mahmuda said her son had never been to the US after his stint with the BNP government in 2006.

"Police cooked up a story in 2011 that my son had hoodwinked the immigration authorities in both the US and Bangladesh and had visited the US without anyone knowing of it."

She also sought the intervention of the chief justice to conduct a judicial probe into the allegations.