A British man who survived an Isis attack has been released from a prison in Bangladesh after more than two years of being held without charge over baseless terrorism accusations. Hasnat Karim had been celebrating his daughter’s 13th birthday at the Holey Artisan Bakery cafe in Dhaka on 1 July 2016 when militants burst in and massacred 22 people. Relatives said the former university professor, who is a British-Bangladeshi national, was forced to act as a human shield by jihadi gunmen who threatened to kill his children. Mr Karim and his family survived the atrocity, but he was imprisoned after being wrongly accused by Bangladeshi police of colluding with the terrorists. Relatives travelled to British embassies and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London to plead for officials to secure his freedom, but the appeals came to no avail until last Thursday. Bangladesh authorities released the father-of-two from jail in Gazipur after police filed a charge sheet that did not name him among the accused.
