Correspondent freed after 50 days

Journalist Saleem Samad was released today after spending 50 days in prison for helping a visiting team of journalists from the British TV station Channel 4. The High Court had repeated on 14 January its ruling that he was being illegally detained, after the government ignored its previous order on 23 December to free him. His family greeted him as he emerged from the prison at Gazipur, north of Dhaka. Friends and relations, especially his wife and son, have been harassed by police since he was arrested on 29 November. Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) praised his lawyer and the campaign by hundreds of journalists and human rights activists to win his release. He is also the Reporters Without Borders correspondent in Bangladesh. But the organisation deplored the fact that the authorities, especially the home minister, had tried to keep him in prison despite the lack of any evidence he was involved in alleged "anti-government activities." It called for the charges still pending against the Channel 4 TV journalists, who were also arrested but allowed to leave the country on 11 December, to be dropped. It said it would support any efforts by Samad or interpreter Priscilla Raj, who was also arrested with the journalists, to obtain damages for the torture they were subjected to during their detention.