অ্যাকসেসিবিলিটি লিংক

Row Over Reuters Report Continues In Bangladesh - 2002-12-14


In Bangladesh the row over the reuters report and its retraction that the Home Minister has allegedly held Al Qaida responsible for the bomb blast in Mymensingh continues. Police Friday night raided the Dhaka Bureau office of Reuters and seized documents related to its reports about the serial bomb blasts at four cinema halls in Mymensingh on December 7.

Although Reuters has retracted its report , the Home Minister has threatened legal action against this international news agency if they do not come up with specific names who were allegedly responsible for this report.In the meantime , Reuters South Asia Editor William James Spo Sato arrived in Dhaka on Saturday. Sato is looking into developments that led the news agency to retract its Dhaka datelined reports on December 7 and 8 on the Mymensingh bombings.

Meanwhile, Reuters stringer Enamul Haque Chowdhury, who is also a senior reporter of the official BSS news agency, was interrogated, the second day of his three-day remand. The BSS on Saturday sacked Enam on charge of violating service rules.

Information Minister Tariqul Islam told editors of print and electronic media on Saturday that government would sue Reuters for defamation. He was very critical of such reports. Tariqul also referred to the arrested local guides of two European journalists and said: "They have knowingly done it (assisting the foreign journalists) not to earn a few dollars."

"All these are being done to disparage the government," the information minister observed.

In the meantime judicial inquiry on last weeks bomb blast in Mymensingh has begun.

[ To listen to this report click on 1600 UTC]

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