Dhaka, Bangladesh
(AHN) - The government of Bangladesh temporarily blocked access to
Facebook on Saturday. The highly popular social network site was shut
down at around 7:00 pm (local time) after the arrest of a youth in
connection with uploading satiric images of some politicians including
the prime minister and the leader of the opposition.

Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) detained Mahbub Alam Rodin (30) at Ranking
Street in the Wari area of the capital, Dhaka early Saturday on charge
of posting 'offensive' cartoons on government high-ups and making
'derogatory' comments about them on Facebook, the elite force said.

Even though the government did not offer any official statement, local
media quoted the state-run Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission
(BTRC) saying that the posting of some anti-religious and pornographic
links by users across the globe are among the reasons for restricting
the access.

"The access to facebook will resume when the data
operators find a way to block such anti-social content," a high
official of BTRC told the Daily Star, a local newspaper.

The
BTRC earlier asked Mango Telecom and Bangladesh Telecommunication
Company Limited, the two international Internet gateways, to find out a
way to block anti-social contents posted by facebook users.

On
Friday, three Islamic political parties--Islami Oikya Jote, Islami
Andolan and Khelafat Andolan-- demanded immediate ban on Facebook for a
recent campaign by some users inviting people to draw images of Prophet
Hazrat Mohammad (SM).

Pakistan has recently banned facebook.

The social networking site has over 500 million users worldwide, with over 875,000 of them in Bangladesh.