Bangladeshi authorities have prevented the publication of a pro-opposition daily whose editor was arrested last week for sedition and inciting religious tension, an official said Monday. Police sealed off the printing press of Amar Desh on Thursday after the arrest of its editor Mahmudur Rahman, but officials have now barred the publication from using the facilities of another pro-opposition daily.
"They don't have any declaration (authorisation) to publish the newspaper from another press," Dhaka district administrator Yusuf Harun told AFP. Nineteen press workers from Amar Desh were arrested on Saturday and police have filed a case against the editor of the other pro-opposition daily Sangram which offered its printing press, he said. The arrests follow a nation-wide crackdown on the opposition including the detention of more than 200 senior officials of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the entire leadership of the largest Islamic party, Jamaat-i-Islami.