Fact-checking Gowher Rizvi on Al Jazeera

A month ago, Gowher Rizvi, the Bangladesh prime minister's foreign affairs advisor was questioned on Al Jazeera's Head to Head programme by Mehdi Hasan.

For me, as someone who has written about Bangladesh politics for a number of years, the programme was remarkable in that its format allowed for the first time the sustained questioning of someone representing the current Awami League government.

If there was anyone able to respond to Mehdi Hasan's hard questioning, Gowher Rizvi was probably the man to do so - but as I have written earlier, there are aspects of the current government's human rights and governance record that are hard to defend.

In the course of seeking to justify the Bangladesh government's position, Rizvi - and the Bangladesh High Commissioner in the UK who was present to support him - made a number of false statements, inaccuracies and misrepresentations.

Here are 18 examples.

State agencies release Maroof Zamen from secret detention

On the evening of December 4, 2017, Maroof Zaman, a former Bangladeshi ambassador to Qatar and Vietnam, (as well as previously Counsellor of the Bangladesh High Commission in UK and an additional secretary of the foreign ministry) was picked up by state security agencies as he was driving alone to the airport to pick up his daughter Samiha Zaman. 

Later that day, at around 7.45pm, Zaman called his home telephone landline from an unidentified number and informed the domestic help that some people would come by the house to retrieve his computer, and instructed them to cooperate. About 20 minutes later, three tall, well-dressed men came to the house and took possession of his laptop, home computer, camera, and spare smartphone. They wore caps and surgical masks to conceal their faces from the building’s CCTV cameras.

Al Jazeera's Mehdi Hasan takes on Bangladesh's Gowher Rizvi

This is going to make interesting and engrossing television.

The suave Gowher Rizvi, the Bangladesh Prime Minister's international affairs advisor, taking on the fierce interviewing style of Al Jazeera's Mehdi Hasan. 

The programme is being aired tomorrow on Friday, 1 March and for those interested in Bangladesh is "must watch" television. I was in the audience at the live broadcast, and Rizvi at what point looked like a boxer on the ropes. Though there probably is no one more capable than Rizvi of defending the Bangladesh government's human rights and governance record, the record of the Government on these issues is so parlous that even his skills are insufficient.