Terrorist attacks on political opponents using local and Pakistan-based militant groups, and torture and intimidation using the state machinery, including the army, marked the 2001-06 tenure of the BNP-led four-party alliance government.
Many BNP politicians, US government officials in Dhaka, several international rights watchdogs and the media at the time pointed the finger at the then-prime minister's son and heir apparent Tarique Rahman and his Hawa Bhaban clique.
Recently, some senior leaders of the BNP claimed that the allegations against Tarique and the Hawa Bhaban were false, politically motivated and media creation.
"Notorious for flagrantly and frequently demanding bribes in connection with government procurement actions and appointments to political office, Tarique is a symbol of kleptocratic government and violent politics in Bangladesh," said former ambassador James F Moriarty.
In April 2006, veteran politician Col (Retd) Oli Ahmad said his grievances were more pointed and included a disdain for Tarique while talking to a US embassy official.
In mid-2006, Oli Ahmed publicly charged his party's leadership with condoning rampant corruption in its ranks. A 1971 war hero and respected confidant of the BNP founder, Oli Ahmed, in meetings with the US and other Western diplomats, disparaged the BNP's heir apparent as “arrogant and immature.”
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A former lawmaker from Bogra, Golam Mohammad Siraj, criticized Tarique for “acting like royalty” and surrounding himself with “lickspittles”. "When Tarique came into politics we could not adjust," Siraj said of the reformists while talking to a US embassy official in December 2008. "We were very uncomfortable."
US envoy Patricia Butenis said in December 2006 that BNP members not in Tarique's faction complained about him privately, sometimes citing his corruption and heavy-handed tactics.
"Some claim to be threatened and surveilled by intelligence services as a result of their anti-Tarique stance… It takes a party leader of Saifur Rahman's stature as finance minister and a party founder to survive losing challenges to Tarique's influence in party affairs,” she said in a cable on the country's emerging leaders.
Before and after Tarique's arrest in March 2007, the military-backed caretaker government investigated corruption charges against him and remanded him in custody. His cohorts, like Harris Chowdhury and Giasuddin Al Mamun, were also grilled.
After being released from jail on parole on condition that he would never engage in politics, Tarique went to London on September 11, 2008, and has since been running the party from abroad.
In 2005, Amnesty International said escalating levels of violence, including several waves of bombings, combined with a lack of appropriate action by the authorities had pushed Bangladesh to the edge of a human rights crisis.
In a report in 2006, HRW said: "Political and security conditions deteriorated in Bangladesh in 2005. The country saw nearly daily bombings throughout the year", including the simultaneous blasts in 63 districts, all of them targeted at government institutions, by the JMB.
“Over the last few years, as religious intolerance across Bangladesh has increased, several hundred thousand Hindus, Buddhists and Christians have fled the country.”
The New York-based rights group said: "The country's human rights record, already of pressing concern, worsened, as Bangladesh's security forces continue to commit numerous abuses, including extra-judicial killings, excessive use of force, and custodial torture. Human rights defenders and journalists who report on the abuses continue to be harassed and intimidated."
Patronization of militancy
In 2001, soon after the election, government supporters carried out violent attacks on Awami League activists and members of the Hindu community across Bangladesh.
A three-member judicial probe committee, led by former district judge and President Mohammed Shahabuddin, was formed in 2009. The committee found the involvement of several ministers of the BNP-Jamaat government among 26,352 people in more than 18,000 violent incidents.
Before the formation of RAB, the Khaleda-Tarique government launched "Operation Clean Heart", a ruthless joint drive by troops from October 17, 2002 to January 9, 2003.
Amnesty said at least 40 men died, reportedly as a result of torture, after being detained by soldiers. Later, immunity from prosecution was granted to officials and army personnel associated with human rights violations in parliament.
In early 2004, with the help of intelligence agencies and government officials, Hawa Bhaban facilitated the import of a ship loaded with arms for the Indian separatist group Ulfa through Chittagong. Major General Gaganjit Singh, the retired deputy director general of India's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), recently told India Today that then-Commander-in-Chief of Ulfa Paresh Barua was the mastermind of the whole plot.
“But he was operating in close coordination with DGFI and some NSI officials who had close links with Tareque Rahman (current acting chairman of BNP) and his cronies in what was then referred to as Hawa Bhaban (political office of BNP),” he said. The arms were being supplied by taking advantage of the BNP-Jamaat alliance to use Bangladesh as a sanctuary.
In mid-August 2004, Mufti Abdul Hannan, chief of the banned militant outfit Harkatul Jihad al Islami Bangladesh (Huji-B), stated in court that he was present at the meeting in Hawa Bhaban, during which Tarique instructed Babar and Deputy Minister Abdus Salam Pintu to provide complete support for the execution of the attack.
Formed with Afghan war veterans who also met with al-Qaeda supremo Osama bin Laden in the late 90s, Huji-B launched operations in Bangladesh publicly in 1992, by which time the BNP had come to power, according to media reports. Huji-B also conducted several other grenade attacks on AL leaders, including SAMS Kibria and the UK envoy.
On January 25, 2005, then-US ambassador in Dhaka Harry K Thomas wrote to Washington that the government's “inability or unwillingness to solve such incidents [committed in 2004] fuels speculation that the perpetrators, Islamist or otherwise, enjoy political protection”.
On February 7 of the same year, Thomas met with Khaleda Zia. In a cable regarding the meeting, the ambassador wrote: "We have serious concerns given our experience after the August 21 attack, when the BDG denied ATF consultants access to key witnesses and failed to protect the crime scene from severe contamination."
Due to Washington's bitter experience in the past in dealing with the August 21 incident, Thomas wanted to make sure that the involvement of US law enforcement consultants in the SMAS Kibria murder probe would be meaningful.
Scotland Yard, too, had a bitter experience with the investigations of the August 21 attack in Dhaka and the May 21 attack on UK High Commissioner Anwar Choudhury in Sylhet in 2004, said Thomas.
On June 13, 2005, Sheikh Hasina, at a press conference, alleged that four people offloaded a consignment of arms from a tinted jeep at Tarique's in-laws' residence at Dhanmondi the night before the grenade attack.
On December 15, 2005, PMO Principal Secretary Kamal Uddin exposed Tarique's connection with the militant groups Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) while talking to the US ambassador.
He said the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) had been forced to release Khamaru, a key associate of Bangla Bhai, after a phone call from Tarique Rahman, who was acting at the behest of his close aide, State Minister for Land Ruhul Quddus Talukder Dulu.
Four days later, Babar told a US embassy official that at one time, when Bangla Bhai was popular in the Rajshahi division for his vigilante action against local criminals, several government ministers supported him. Asked if those ministers were being held accountable, he sighed: "This is a difficult question you are asking me."
Another telegram cited Inspector General of Police Noor Mohammad telling the media in April 2007 that the government would name terrorist patrons -- Dulu, former telecommunications minister Aminul Haque and former lawmaker Nadim Mustafa -- for their support and financial backing of the JMB.
According to another cable, Aminul had recruited Bangla Bhai in 2004 to conduct his armed operation against the BNP's political opponents -- Awami League and ultra-leftists in Rajshahi and Natore areas.
