Explain concerns over UK journalist's conviction: Bangla court

A Bangladeshi court today asked civil society members, who had expressed concern over the conviction of a British journalist on contempt charges for questioning the official death toll from the 1971 independence war, to explain their statements by January 27.
A special war crimes tribunal in the country on December 2 sentenced British journalist David Bergman to a one-day symbolic imprisonment on contempt charges for making derogatory remarks about the tribunal and for questioning the three million official death toll in the 1971 independence war against Pakistan in a blog post.
"The tribunal today issued an order, asking all those who expressed their concern over Bergman's conviction to clarify their statements by January 27," the registrar of the Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal-2 (ICT-2) Mustafizur Rahman told media.

A total of 50 eminent individuals of civil society had issued a note of concern after the conviction of Bergman. Later, a women leader for rights, had pulled out her statement.
Those who are living abroad have been asked to provide their explanations through the Foreign Ministry while the rests would have to clarify their worries through lawyers or in person.
The conviction drew global concern over freedom of speech in Bangladesh.

In its December 2 verdict, the tribunal said that Bergman, currently working for Bangladesh's New Age newspaper, deserved the punishment for demeaning the court by his "irrelevant" criticism of the trial process on his personal blog.

It said the journalist had crossed the limit of his professional ethics in the name of freedom of expression.
The judgment came nearly 10 months after a Supreme Court lawyer filed the contempt petition saying Bergman made "relentless efforts to justify that the tribunal was absolutely wrong in mentioning three million deaths and the number of 200,000 women raped in 1971".
Bergman is the husband of prominent lawyer and rights activist Sara Hossain and son-in-law of leading lawyer Kamal Hossain, a close associate of Bangladesh's founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.