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AFP
Two students were detained in Bangladesh’s port city of Chittagong after they were attacked by a mob over allegations they defamed the Prophet Muhammed on Facebook, police said
yesterday.
Police filed primary charges against the two 18-year-olds under the country’s Information Communications Technology (ICT) laws after investigators found anti-religious comments on their Facebook pages, local police chief Atiq Ahmed
Chowdhury said.
“Our officers rescued them from a mob of angry students who were beating them in a Chittagong college on Sunday,” he said.
A court remanded the two accused in custody after rejecting their application for bail, Chowdhury added.
Rezaul Masud, deputy commissioner of Chittagong police, said the two could face a maximum 14 years in jail and a fine of around 10mn taka ($125,000) if they were found guilty under the controversial Article 57 of the ICT laws.
Defence lawyer Abu Bakar Siddique Azim told the Dhaka Tribune daily that his clients denied the accusations and had not “made any kind of public writings that goes against anyone’s religious belief”.
Muslim-majority Bangladesh is officially secular, but the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has used Article 57 to crack down on dissent and anti-religious bloggers.
Last year four bloggers were arrested and were detained for months after they were accused of making anti-Islam
comments.
An editor of a pro-opposition daily and two leading human rights defenders were also detained using the same law.
There has been vociferous debate between staunch atheists and fundamentalists in Bangladesh’s social media for years, but it took a deadly turn in February last year when an anti-Islam blogger was murdered. That came amid massive rallies in Dhaka in which secular groups demanded the hanging of leading Islamists accused of war crimes during the 1971 war of liberation.
Islamist groups also had staged nationwide demonstrations, with their demands including the prosecution - and execution - of atheist bloggers.
Five students of an elite university have been arrested in connection with the February 2013 blogger murder, while a little known Islamic group has been blamed for
masterminding the crime.
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