Three lawyers, arrested on charges of financing militancy in Bangladesh, have been sent to jail after they reportedly confessed to their crimes before a Chittagong court.
Published : 23 Aug 2015, 05:39 PM
RAB arrested them on Aug 18 in Dhaka.
Of them, Barrister Shakila Farjana and Advocate Hasanuzzaman Liton practise at the Supreme Court while Mahfuz Chowdhury Bapan is an advocate at Dhaka Judges Court.
Farjana is the daughter of Syed Wahidul Alam, a former BNP whip from Chittagong.
Defence lawyer Abdus Sattar said the trio on Sunday gave confessional statements in Banshkhali Senior Judicial Magistrate Sazzad Hossain’s Court and sought bail.
“But the court ordered jail for them,” he told bdnews24.com.
Police produced them before the court after a four-day interrogation.
Sattar said the trio had made similar claims in their statements. “They took money as fee to run a case in the High Court and returned the money later when they found it unnecessary.”
He claimed the case against them was ‘ill motivated’.
State counsel Bikash Ranjan Dhar, however, said the accused had ‘indirectly’ admitted to have helped in funding terrorism.
“(In their statements) under Section 164 (of the Bangladesh Penal Code), they said in court that they charged fees to run the case for Hifazat-e Islam and later returned the money.”
He said, “Maniruzzuman Don is not involved with Hifazat. He is one of the main organisers of Shaheed Hamza Brigade.”
“That way, we can say that the accused had financed them (Hamza Brigade),” Dhar said.
Don was arrested earlier this year. The arrested lawyers used to contribute the money through his bank accounts, RAB had said.
After arresting the lawyers, RAB said they had given Tk 10.8 million to militant organisation Shaheed Hamza Brigade for purchasing weapons.
The elite police unit has arrested 29 Hamza Brigade members since February in Chittagong and seized a huge cache of weapons and explosives.