Veteran student leader Shafi Ahmed dies

Shafi Ahmed, one of the key orgnisers of student protests during the anti-autocracy movement against the HM Ershad regime in the 1980s, has died in Dhaka aged 63, reports bdnews24.com.
Hasanul Haq Inu, president of the Jatiyatabadi Samajtantrik Dal (JSD), said the former student leader died in his sleep around 6:45pm on Monday.
A doctor confirmed that he had passed on after he was taken to a Uttara hospital, Inu said.
Shafi was the general secretary of JSD-Chhatra League during the anti-autocracy movement while studying law at Dhaka University.
He later joined the Awami League and became an assistant secretary of the central committee.
Shafi then served as a member of the party's Liberation Affairs Sub-committee.
The Awami League nominated him to run for parliament from the Netrokona-4 constituency in the general elections which were scheduled for 2007 but forestalled.
After failing to secure the ruling party's ticket in the last four general elections, he stood as an independent in the Jan 7 polls, but his nomination was scrapped by the Election Commission.
Ershad fell in early December 1990 but much of what led to his downfall had happened in the 1980s.
Shafi played a key role in keeping the anti-Ershad campaign on the Dhaka University campus on track throughout the 1980s.
Shafi Ahmed was a campus legend in the 1980s and remained a key figure when the general finally gave up.
The former student leader was one of those that foiled attempts to derail the pro-democracy movement by agents planted by the desperate general in his last days in power.
Shafi led or controlled many of those crucial events that led to the eventual downfall of the disgraced dictator in early December 1990.