DHAKA – Families of political prisoners secretly jailed under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina anxiously waited for news of their loved ones on Aug 6, as reports emerged of some detainees being released.
“We need answers,” stated Sanjida Islam Tulee, coordinator of Mayer Daak, or “The Call of the Mothers,” a group advocating for the release of individuals detained by Hasina’s security forces.
Rights groups have accused Hasina’s administration of abducting and disappearing around 600 people, predominantly from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the banned Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party.
Ms. Tulee told AFP that at least 20 families gathered outside a military intelligence building in northern Dhaka, hoping for updates about their relatives. Army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman announced on Aug 5 that Hasina had resigned following weeks of deadly protests, with the military stepping in to form a caretaker government.
Subsequently, President Mohammed Shahabuddin, after a meeting with the army chief, declared that all those arrested during the student protests, as well as key opposition leader Khaleda Zia, would be released.
Ex-Prime Minister Zia, 78, the chairperson of the BNP, has been in poor health and largely under house arrest after receiving a 17-year prison sentence for graft in 2018. Among those released on Aug 6 was opposition activist and lawyer Ahmad Bin Quasem, son of executed Jamaat-e-Islami leader Mir Quasem Ali.
“He was released from secret detention this morning,” confirmed family friend Masum Khalili. “He had a medical check-up, and his condition is stable.”
Quasem, a British-educated barrister, was allegedly abducted by security forces in plainclothes in August 2016. During Hasina’s rule, security forces were accused of detaining tens of thousands of opposition activists, conducting extrajudicial killings, and making opposition leaders and supporters disappear.
Human Rights Watch reported in 2023 that security forces had carried out “over 600 enforced disappearances” since Hasina took power in 2009, with nearly 100 people still unaccounted for. Hasina’s government denied the allegations, claiming that some of the missing individuals had drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe.
“We heard Ahmad Bin Quasem has been released,” Ms. Tulee said, “but what happened to others?”