By David Bergman on 20/04/2016
Dhaka: US court records contradict the
Bangladesh government’s claims that the conviction a year ago of three men in
New York for illegally obtaining confidential FBI records involved a plot to
kill the son of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed.
Indeed, the US district court judge who tried the case
specifically dismissed prosecutors’ claims that the men planned to ‘physically
harm’ Sajeeb Wazed Joy, the son of Sheikh Hasina.
The US court’s findings made during the sentencing in March
2015 of the three men who pleaded guilty to bribery offences, conflict directly
with the basis of the criminal case that led to the arrest in Dhaka last
Saturday of the prominent journalist Shafik Rehman for conspiring in the
so-called plot to ‘kidnap and kill’ Wazed.
Rehman, who edits the magazine Mouchake Dhil and
convenes the international affairs committee of the opposition Bangladesh
Nationalist Party (BNP), was arrested on Saturday from his home after
three police officers pretended to be reporters from a private television station.
Mahmadur Rahman, the former editor of the daily newspaper Amar
Desh, who has been jailed since 2013 on various cases, was on Monday also
‘shown arrested’ in the same case.
The US court’s findings, published for the first time
by The Wire also contradicts Wazed’s widely publicised claims
that the three men convicted by the US court, were jailed “for this plot”
to kill him, and that the “evidence” behind the arrest of Rehman “comes
directly from this [US] case.”
Wazed and the filing of a case in Bangladesh
The bribery case in the US first came to public attention in
Bangladesh when Wazed published a Facebook post on March 9, 2013 stating
that he had provided a victim statement before the New York Court sentenced
Rizve Ahmed (aka Caesar), the son of the vice-president of the cultural wing of
the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
Wazed’s Facebook page is ‘liked’ by over 1.7 million
people and his comments are widely covered in the media.
Ahmed, a US citizen of Bangladeshi origin, had pleaded
guilty to two offences relating to bribing an FBI agent to obtain confidential
financial and other records relating to the Bangladeshi prime minister’s son.
Wazed, without mentioning the nature of offences before the
US court, stated that, “Caesar was promised US $40,000 per month and given the
first payment of US $30,000 in cash directly from very senior BNP leaders in
Bangladesh. I cannot disclose their names because the investigation is ongoing.
The BNP had planned to kidnap me and kill me here in the US.”
Wazed’s Facebook post resulted in the police in May 2015
filing a General Diary entry, referring to the criminal conviction of the three
men in the US as well as the allegation made by Wazed that the BNP has planned
to kill him.
Three months later, the police filed a first information
report with the court, which claimed that the father of Ahmed, along with other
BNP leaders living in Bangladesh and abroad had conspired to “kidnap and
kill Joy (Wazed) in America” and that Ahmed had already been jailed in the US
“as part of this conspiracy.”
A few hours after Rehman was arrested on Saturday for
his involvement in this criminal case, Wazed posted a further Facebook post.
It stated: “Today our Government arrested a senior
“journalist” and opposition BNP leader Shafik Rehman for his involvement in a
plot to kidnap and kill me in the US. A US BNP leader’s son, a former FBI agent
and another American friend of both are already serving time in the US for this
plot. …. The evidence against “journalist” Shafik Rehman comes directly from
this case.”
And just for good measure, he tweeted
much the same: Journalist #ShafikRehman arrested for BNP plot to
kidnap and kill @sajeebwazed. Evidence from US DOJ case.
Later that day, in arguing that Shafiq should be remanded in custody, the police told the
magistrate that the US court had jailed Ahmed for his involvement in a plot to
kill the prime minister’s son and that the journalist had conspired with him in
this endeavour.
The US bribery scheme
However publicly available US court documents tell a rather
different story to the one narrated by Wazed and by the police.
The bribery scheme, which involved three men – Ahmed who
gave the money, and FBI special agent Robert Lustyik and their mutual friend
Johannes Thaler who took the money – started in September 2011.
Ahmed is described by prosecutors as ‘a devotee of and
affiliated with the Bangladesh National Party’ who sought to ‘assist his
political allies and harm his political opponents’
In December, in exchange for $1000, Thaler gave Ahmed a
number of confidential documents about Wazed, which Lustyik had illegally
obtained from FBI databases.
These included, according to the government sentencing
report filed with the court in February 2015, “an internal memorandum (the ‘FBI
Memo’) that referred to Individual 1 and a sum of $300 million, and a
confidential report, known as a Suspicious Activity Report (the ‘SAR’) that
also referred to Individual 1.” Individual 1 refers to Wazed.
Banks or financial institutions are required to file a
SAR report when they identify any suspicious financial transactions.
The court documents did not provide any further information about the reference
to ‘$300 million’
After further discussions, Ahmed agreed in principle to pay
the two other men a $40,000 retainer fee and $30,000 per month in exchange for
additional information on Wazed. According to prosecutors, Ahmed represented
himself to the men as someone who “was working with multiple associates who also
sought the documents and information and were willing to pay for them.”
Ahmed was particularly interested in getting more
information about the ‘$300 million’. In one text, set out in the
indictment, he wrote: “Just give me some idea what exactly you have on them …
The last documents you gave me about $300 millions. How far that investigation
went n what they found. Give me some idea and I will get u that contract!!!”
(sic)
On January 29, 2012, the three men along with ‘three
associates of Ahmed’s’ met at Ahmed’s residence to discuss exchanging
additional confidential law enforcement information for further cash payments.
However, no contract was signed, and no new money changed
hands.
After the three men were arrested, they all pleaded guilty
to the commission of bribery offences. None of them were charged with any
offence concerned with seeking to physically harm Wazed or anyone else.
Rizve Ahmed’s objective in bribing the FBI officer
In seeking to get a more severe sentence, the prosecution in
its sentencing submission, claimed that Ahmed had admitted to them during an
interview that one of his purposes in bribing the FBI agent to obtain
information about Wazed was to “scare,” “kidnap,” and “hurt” him.
However, at the time of sentencing, the judge dismissed the
prosecution claim that Ahmed had obtained the information with an intention to
physically harm Wazed.
“The [US] government’s contention that [Rizve] Ahmed in fact
sought to kidnap and physically harm an individual is a stretch,” Judge Vincent
L. Briccetti said in March 2015 when he sentenced Ahmed to 44 months
imprisonment for the bribery offences.
“I just don’t feel there’s enough evidence that’s been
presented to me for me to make that finding,” the judge of the Southern
District Court of New York said according to court transcripts. “[T]he
statements [Ahmed] made about it were conflicting. At first he said he did,
then he said he didn’t. I don’t know which is true.”
He added that in the exchanges between the three men,
“There’s no talk … about doing physical harm to Individual 1. So I cannot find
that that objective was part of the offense of conviction here.”
The judge also specifically ruled that Wazed was not a
‘victim’ in the case.
Judge Bricetti concluded that Ahmed’s sole reason for bribing
the FBI agent was to embarrass Wazed for political gain. “This case is all
about furthering Ahmed’s political aims, getting confidential information to
expose what Ahmed apparently thought was corrupt behavior by the ruling party
and otherwise embarrass [Sajeeb Wazed],” the judge stated. According to
court transcripts, Wazed was present in court when the judge made this ruling.
It should be noted that at no time did the US prosecutors
ever claim in court that there was any intention to ‘kill’ the prime minister’s
son, as has been widely reported in Bangladesh.
The ‘journalist’
In its sentencing submission the government said that Ahmed
had distributed the confidential information to three men, for which he earned
$30,000. One of the men was ‘a Bangladeshi journalist’
.
The police in Bangladesh are claiming that the editor Rehman
is this journalist, and on Tuesday the police said that they had
found some FBI documents at this house during a search.
The police are also suggesting that Rehman may have been one
of the three ‘associates’ involved in the meeting in January 2015.
The US court records do not provide the identity of this
journalist. However, the only claim made by the US prosecutors about the
‘journalist’ is that he or she received confidential FBI information from
Ahmed. The prosecutors do not link the journalist to their claim – dismissed by
the judge – that Ahmed planned to physically harm Wazed.
The prosecutors also do not claim that the meeting in
January 2015 was about anything other than discussing the exchange of
additional confidential law enforcement information.
In apparent response to widespread skepticism about the
legitimacy of the arrest of Rahman, on Monday Wazed published a further Facebook post.
It read: “The US Department of Justice discovered Shafik
Rehman’s direct involvement in the plot to kidnap and kill me. They provided
this evidence to our Government. He was arrested based on this evidence. I
cannot disclose more, but the evidence is direct and irrefutable.”
And he
tweeted: ‘US DOJ discovered #ShafikRehman in plot to kill @sajeebwazed.
Provided evidence’.
On being asked to comment on Wazed’s claim, Peter Carr from
the US Department of Justice told TheWire, “We’ll decline to
comment.”
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