Dhaka, Aug 16 (EFE).- Police said on Friday they arrested a sacked army officer, who is accused of widespread enforced disappearance during deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s rule.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police, in a post on its Facebook page, said the sacked Major General, Ziaul Ahsan, was arrested from the Khilkhet area of Dhaka on a murder charge.
Ahsan headed the National Telecommunication Monitoring Center (NTMC) until he was sacked on Aug. 6, a day after a student-led mass uprising forced Hasina to resign and flee to India.
Seen as a close aide of the ousted prime minister, the former officer is accused of widespread human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearance, and illegal spying on citizens while serving in the elite security agency Rapid Action Battalion and the NTMC.
“He is the man behind most of the killings and disappearances in 2014–15. Later, he spied on us while heading the NTMC. We could not even host a guest in our house due to him,” Afroza Islam Akhi, cofounder of Mayer Daak, which was working as a platform for the families of disappeared people, told EFE.
Ahsan is the fifth senior figure to be arrested after the fall of Hasina. Earlier, her law minister Anisul Huq, adviser Salman Fazlur Rahman, deputy speaker of parliament Shamsul Haque, and junior minister for information and communication Zunaid Ahmed Palak.
A murder case was filed against Hasina on Friday in the northern district town Bogura over the killing of a teacher during the protest against her government on Aug 4, Shaihan Waliullah, the officer-in-charge of Bogura Sadar police station, told EFE.
Hasina’s second-in-command in her party, the Awami League, Obaidul Quader, also a former minister, was also among the 101 accused in the case, Waliullah said.
This is the eighth case filed against Hasina and her aides for murder during the student-led protest that led to her ouster.
In addition to this, two complaints were filed against Hasina and her aides with the International Crimes Tribunal, a local court, where the interim government headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus announced that it would hold her trial for the killings during the student protests.
According to an EFE tally, over 400 people have died in Bangladesh since student protests against Hasina’s government began on July 1.
What started as a student protest against a controversial public jobs quota for descendants of freedom fighters from Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971 soon escalated into a youth-led revolution, culminating in Hasina’s abrupt resignation. EFE
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