On November 15, Shahidul Alam has been granted bail by the High Court in Dhaka, Bangladesh, after 102 days in jail.
Alam’s lawyers Sara Hossain and Jyotirmoy Barua gave the folowing statement:
Today the High Court granted bail to Dr. Shahidul Alam after 102 days in custody. For granting him bail, the court notes that he did not make any confessional statement admitting to any of the allegations made against him. The court also noted that the statements that were made in the police record is completely different from and inconsistent with the interview that he gave with Al Jazeera. We should point out that throughout this case the state’s lawyers have insisted that Dr. Alam’s statements amounted to hurting the image of the nation and instigating violence; when in fact the state’s lawyer never even put the Al Jazeera interview into the police case or on the record. The court also said, two of the other reasons for granting Dr. Alam bail were that he is an elderly person, and an eminent photographer known throughout the world. And, more importantly, the police still has not submitted its investigation report and it is unclear when they are going to do so. He definitely deserves bail. We are very pleased to have got this order after so many days. We very much hope that the government would respect the order of the court and not in any way further what has already been a grotesque miscarriage of justice.
Alam’s lawyers were hoping to have him released on Sunday after taking the decision to the lower court. Since then, a lawyer representing the state filed a petition seeking cancellation of the bail order granted to Alam with an hearing to be held on Sunday afternoon.
As of Monday early morning in Bangladesh, Shahidul Alam was still in jail.
