Malaysian authorities have barred Adilur Rahman Khan, secretary of Bangladesh rights organisation Odhikar, from entering Kuala Lumpur.
Published : 20 Jul 2017, 04:34 PM
He landed at the Kuala Lumpur airport around 4am local time to attend a conference, said Odhikar Director Nasiruddin Elan.
"The immigration police are not letting him leave the airport," he told bdnews24.com.
Forum-Asia, a Bangkok-based rights organisation, has called for the lawyer's release.
"As of now, no reasons have been given for his detention,” it said in a statement.
Suara Rakyat Malaysia, a Malaysian Forum-Asia member, was informed that he has been moved into an immigration lock-up, according to the statement.
Adilur and Elan face trial in Bangladesh for distorting facts over the 2013 Hifazat-e Islam demonstration in Dhaka's Motijheel.
The two have been charged with distorting facts and presenting false evidence against security forces.
An Odhikar report claimed 61 people had been killed during the raid by police and other security forces at Motijheel’s Shapla Chattar, where Hifazat supporters launched an indefinite sit-in protest.
The report allegedly distorted facts, doctored pictures used in reports with the help of Photoshop and passed off a living person as dead.
Police claimed there were no casualties during the action.
Adilur, who served as a deputy attorney general during the BNP-Jamaat regime, had been behind bars for some time until securing bail from the Supreme Court.
Bangladesh police said there was no Interpol notice over him.
"As far as I know, there’s no Interpol request to detain Adilur Rahman Khan," Assistant Inspector General Mahbubur Rahman of Interpol's Dhaka National Central Bureau told bdnews24.com.
“The Malaysian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Adilur Rahman Khan and allow him to participate in and speak at the conference,” London-based Amnesty International said in a statement on Thursday.
James Gomez, Amnesty International’s director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said: “There is no justification for detaining him whatsoever. It is an outrage that a human rights activist cannot even travel freely to speak on a key human rights issue.”
“Moreover, we understand that he still has not been given access to legal advice and is at risk of being deported.”
He suspected that this arrest and detention was the latest target “in a growing trend to impose travel bans on human rights defenders entering Malaysia.”
Khan’s detention is the latest in a series of cases where peaceful activists have been barred from entering the country, including Hong Kong political activist Joshua Wong, Indonesian human rights defender Mugiyanto Sipin and Singaporean political activist Han Hui Hui, according to the statement.
Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network, the organisers of the conference, said Khan was the only foreign participant not allowed into the country.
Human rights campaigners from Amnesty International are among those in attendance.