July 18 (Reuters) – Bangladesh’s Supreme Court on Sunday lifted a government ban on the publication of a pro-opposition newspaper, but the daily’s editor remained in police custody.
Authorities last month banned the Amar Desh newspaper, considered a mouthpiece of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and detained its editor Mahmudur Rahman.
“A full bench led by Chief Justice Mohammed Fazlul Karim in a ruling scrapped the ban,” a registrar of the Supreme Court told reporters.
The publication was banned following a complaint by a businessman who had accused its editor of cheating him by continuing to list him as a publisher even though he resigned from that post in December 2008.
Rahman, a former energy adviser to the BNP government between 2001-06, was charged with graft and was denied bail by a lower court.
The BNP accused the government of halting publication after the daily ran articles critical of the government and the prime minister.
(Reporting by Nizam Ahmed, editing by Jonathan Thatcher))