Blindfolded, handcuffed and dragged out of his secret jail for the primary time in eight years, Bangladeshi lawyer Ahmad Bin Quasem held his breath and listened to the sound of a gun being cocked.
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As an alternative, they dumped him from a automobile right into a muddy ditch on the outskirts of Dhaka, alive, free and unaware of the nationwide upheaval that had sparked his abrupt launch.
“That was the primary time I had gotten contemporary air in eight years,” stated Quasem, 40. “I assumed they have been going to kill me.”
Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister answerable for Mr Quasem’s abduction and disappearance, had fled the nation hours earlier.
His ouster on August 5 introduced an abrupt finish to fifteen years of autocracy that included mass arrests and extrajudicial executions of his political opponents.
However Mr. Quasem didn’t know that.
He had been confined within the ‘Home of Mirrors’ (Aynaghar), a facility run by Military intelligence, named as a result of its detainees have been by no means imagined to see anybody however themselves.
Throughout his lengthy imprisonment, Mr. Quasem was chained 24 hours a day in windowless solitary confinement.
His jailers have been beneath strict orders to not transmit information of the skin world.
Elsewhere within the detention centre, guards performed loud music all through the day that drowned out the Islamic name to prayer from close by mosques.
This prevented Mr Quasem, a religious Muslim, from figuring out when he was supposed to supply his prayers and from maintaining monitor of how a lot time had handed since his abduction.
When the music died down, he heard the distressing sounds of different detainees.
“Slowly, slowly, I realised I used to be not alone,” he stated. “I may hear individuals crying, I may hear individuals being tortured, I may hear individuals screaming.” Human Rights Watch stated final yr that safety forces had dedicated “greater than 600 enforced disappearances” since Hasina returned to energy in 2009.
Rumors abounded a couple of secret black web site that housed a few of these people, however Aynaghar was unknown to the general public till the publication overseas of a 2022 whistleblower report.
Ms Hasina’s authorities subsequently persistently maintained that it didn’t exist.
He additionally denied committing enforced disappearances, saying a few of these reported lacking had drowned within the Mediterranean whereas making an attempt to achieve Europe.
Quasem is for certain of the motive for his abduction: his father, Mir Quasem Ali, a number one member of Bangladesh’s largest Islamist social gathering, Jamaat-e-Islami, was on trial that yr.
Ali was accused of main a paramilitary group that tortured Bangladeshi separatists throughout the nation’s liberation conflict towards Pakistan in 1971.
He and several other others have been indicted by a conflict crimes tribunal, ostensibly to carry justice to victims of that devastating battle however extensively seen as a way for Hasina to eradicate her political opponents.
There was no manner of figuring out whether or not Ali was responsible or not, given the mockery of justice that accompanied his prosecution.
Mr Quasem, then 32 and admitted to the London Bar, was representing his father.
His common press conferences on procedural failures and judicial bias on the court docket, echoed by human rights teams and UN consultants, put him within the crosshairs.
One evening, males in plain garments broke into his residence, separated him from his household, dragged him down the steps and threw him right into a ready automobile.
“I may by no means imagine in my wildest goals that I might be subjected to disappearance simply days earlier than my father’s execution,” Quasem stated.
“I stored telling them, ‘Have you learnt who I’m? I must be there to pursue my case. I must be there with my household.’”
Mr. Quasem’s father was hanged 4 weeks later. Mr. Quasem didn’t be taught of this till about three years later, when one in every of his jailers by chance let him escape.
Freedom finally
After the automobile that had taken him from jail sped away, Quasem walked by the evening to attempt to discover his manner residence. By pure coincidence, he stumbled upon a medical clinic run by a charity of which his father had been a trustee.
A employees member recognised him and frantically looked for a telephone quantity to contact his household, who rushed to be with him. However not earlier than the animated chatter of these round him knowledgeable Quasem of the weeks of scholar protests that had resulted in his launch.
“All this was attainable thanks to some youngsters,” he stated.
“After I see these kids, these younger individuals, main the best way,” he added, “I’ve hope that that is the chance that may enable Bangladesh to discover a new course.”
Mr. Quasem and his household acquired AFP warmly at residence, however the trauma of his arrest was instantly obvious.
The thick, neat coiffure he sported earlier than his arrest has been lowered to some wild strands and he has misplaced an alarming quantity of weight.
His spouse, Tahmina Akhter, stated the publicity surrounding Quasem’s case made her really feel excluded by different moms at her kids’s faculty.
His two younger daughters have been three and 4 years previous when he was taken. The eldest witnessed the kidnapping and remains to be afraid of sure authority figures, such because the non-public safety guard posted outdoors her faculty. The youngest didn’t bear in mind him in any respect.
“It didn’t look like eight years had handed,” stated Quasem’s mom, Ayesha Khatoon.
“It appeared like eight lifetimes had handed.”
