Tuesday, September 30, 2014

What the alleged British jihadist recruiter said in court

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Saimun Rahman: alleged ISIL recruiter in Dhaka


On Monday (yesterday), the Detective Branch of the police held a press conference in which they claimed to have detained, the previous evening, a British citizen of Bangladeshi origin who had come to Bangladesh to recruit 'jihadists' to fight in Syria/Iraq for the Islamic State for Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

This 'arrest' had been trailed with the detective branch telling journalists a few days earlier that they were on the hunt for such a person.

At around 3 to 4 pm, yesterday, Samiun Rahman, the alleged ISIL recruiter, was brought to court no 19 of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate court.

As coincidence would have it, I had just finished interviewing a public prosecutor across the road for another story and I rushed over to the court.

Here is the full transcript of my short interview with him before the magistrate entered the court (short extracts were used in the Daily Telegraph article, above, and New Age)