a Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal to bring justice related to war crimes committed during the Bangladesh liberation war in 1971. Less than a month after Rahman's release, on 28 March 2011 a judge issued an arrest order for him and two other journalists for defamation charges related to an April 2010 article reporting that certain Awami Party leaders of Kotalipara and their relatives were on the war crimes suspects' list of the International Crimes Tribunal. The judge issued the arrest order for the three journalists because they failed to appear in court; but they had notified him of an earlier case requiring them to be in a Dhaka court the same day. Journalist organisations criticized the arrest order, saying a person could not appear before two courts the same day. They said that the government was disregarding the 2 February 2011 legislation passed by Parliament, which had "nullified the provision of issuing arrest warrants against newsmen in defamation cases." By this time, Mahmudur Rahman had been subject to 49 legal cases under the Awami government, most for defamation. On 14 December 2012, the government charged Rahman with sedition for publishing Skype conversations, illegally hacked by other parties, between Justice Mohammed Nizamul Huq, chairman of Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal, and Ahmed Ziauddin, an international criminal law expert and war crimes activist based in Brussels. The discussions had to do with the work of the Tribunal, and the material was published also in The Economist and another Bangladesh media outlet. Huq resigned shortly afterward because of the controversy. After charges were filed, Rahman avoided arrest by spending the next months in his newspaper's offices, leaving only to seek anticipatory bail. In protesting the charges, Amnesty International said, "The government of Bangladesh must ensure that everyone, in particular journalists and editors, are free to express their views and opinion peacefully without being harassed, intimidated, detained or tortured." The prosecutions and convictions by the International Tribunal have resulted in rising political tensions among some interests. Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest Islamist party, led a one-day strike that developed into violent riots when one of its top officials was convicted. The 2013 Shahbag protests, supported by many students and younger people, began 5 February 2013 in Dhaka after one of the men convicted of war crimes was sentenced to life imprisonment rather than death, as two others were. Protesters demanded that persons convicted of war crimes be