Arrest of ISI agent: BNP wants govt explanation

UNB, Dhaka :
BNP on Wednesday sought an explanation from the government over the report of an Indian daily that India’s external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has arrested a Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI agent from a Bangladesh airport.
“A report of Indian English daily The Times of India about picking up an ISI agent by RAW from a Bangladesh airport has been published in today’s Prothom Alo. We seek an explanation from the government in this regard,” said BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.
He continued: “If The Times of India’s news is true, we want to know from the government how come the intelligence agency of a country can apprehend the agent of another country’s intelligence agency agent. How did the intelligence agency men of other countries enter Bangladesh? Whether the government has no information about it?”
The BNP spokesman was addressing a meeting arranged by Swechchhasebak Dal at the Jatiya Press Club, demanding the release of its president Habibun Nabi Khan Sohel.
Earlier on Tuesday, The Times of India reported that a small mistake on part of the ISI in preparing passport for Indian Mujahideen’s (IM) Pakistani operative Zia-ur Rehman alias Waqas landed him in the net of Indian agencies. Waqas had been hiding in Bangladesh and was supposed to leave for Pakistan via Nepal when he was apprehended by India’s external intelligence agency RAW.
When Waqas reached the airport, Bangladesh’s immigration officials discovered that there was no entry stamp on his passport. Even as they set out to detain him, the commotion attracted the attention of a RAW staffer who swiftly used his smart phone to photograph one of India’s biggest tormentors and relayed it to his superiors, the news paper said.
How the RAW men managed to get Waqas out of the airport and then to India remains unclear, it added.
Fakhrul compared the rule of Awami League-led regime with that of noted filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s imaginary tyrant king Hirak Raja. “The government wants to snatch people’s right to express and hold different opinions and views. “The country is now under an undeclared one-party rule.”