With at least US$4 million annual budget allocated by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Pakistani spy agency Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), a heavily Islamist Bengali daily newspaper named ‘Amar Desh’ is being published from the United Kingdom under the editorship of Mahmudur Rahman. Earlier the newspaper was shut-down in Bangladesh for its diehard support towards Jamaat-e-Islami and Hefazat-e-Islam where ‘Amar Desh’ was known for its notorious anti-West, anti-India, anti-Hindu and anti-Semite editorial policy.
Announcing the resumption of publication, ‘Amar Desh’ has started advertising on social media platforms with the goal of attracting attention of its targeted readers particularly in Bangladesh.
According to information, ‘Amar Desh’ has set up its office at 214 Whitechapel Road, E1 1BJ London, United Kingdom, while Mahmudur Rahman, who has been living in exile in Malaysia and then in Turkey for many years reportedly has returned to Britain and recruited diehard Islamists as the staff of this publication.
Talking to BLiTZ, a source in London said, Mahmudur Rahman has managed fund from Turkey and Pakistani ISI, while he also received few million dollars from family members of war criminals, especially Jamaat-e-Islami’s leader and convicted war criminal Mir Quashem Ali. The newspaper also has included several front-ranking leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami in its team, including Salman Al-Azami, son of Jamaat’s former emir and war criminal Golam Azam.
It may be mentioned here that, back in 2008, Mahmudur Rahman purchased ‘Amar Desh’ newspaper from a former BNP leader with funding from Jamaat-e-Islami, while Jamaat’s publicity secretary Muhammed Tasnim was holding major share in the company. But quickly Mahmudur Rahman started using the newspaper as propaganda vessel for spreading anti-West, anti-India, anti-Hindu and anti-Semite poison, while he also began propagating turning Bangladesh into an Islamist Caliphate. Subsequently, ‘Amar Desh’ became an epicenter of Islamist and jihadist propaganda, while a number of its staffs were actively involved in working for Pakistani ISI.
On 28 December 2008, the day before national elections, an Awami League committee chairman accused Mahmudur Rahman of collaborating to print fake ballot papers in the printing press of the newspaper with the agenda of rigging the 2008 general elections.
Although ‘Amar Desh’ shows names of Oliullah Noman, Minar Rashid, Ariful Huq (a pro-Jamaat actor), and Shiblhy Sohael as the columnists of this Islamist propaganda vessel, several former reporters and staffs of this newspaper are also secretly working from Bangladesh.
According website analytic, readership of ‘Amar Desh’ is extremely meagre as the newspaper is already known to many as a propaganda vessel of Islamists and jihadists as well as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Pakistani ISI.
