Bangladesh’s interim authorities mentioned it should “quickly” start a contemporary investigation and a good trial into the 2009 mutiny within the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) paramilitary group that killed 74 folks, together with 57 military officers serving within the power. | Picture credit score: Reuters
Bangladesh’s interim authorities mentioned on Monday (2 September 2024) {that a} contemporary investigation and honest trial will “quickly” start into the 2009 mutiny within the paramilitary group Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) that killed 74 folks, together with 57 military officers serving within the power.
The interim authorities’s House and Agriculture Affairs Adviser Lt Gen (retd) M Jahangir Alam Chowdhury mentioned that as a citizen and former Military personnel, he was dedicated to making sure justice for the tragic incident.
“The method of re-investigation and honest trial on the BDR bloodbath will start quickly,” he advised reporters after a gathering with Swedish Ambassador to Dhaka Reto Siegfried Renggli at his workplace right here.
Learn additionally: Bangladesh sentences border guards for 2009 riot
The mutiny started on 25-26 February 2009 when military officers refused to adjust to the calls for of BDR troopers. The insurgent troopers staged the revolt on the BDR headquarters in Pilkhana, Dhaka, and it shortly unfold to sectoral headquarters and regional models of the Frontier Pressure throughout the nation.
Through the rise up, paramilitary troopers turned their weapons on their commanders, capturing them at shut vary or stabbing and torturing them to loss of life, hiding their our bodies in sewers and swiftly digging graves, and capturing and humiliating their frightened kinfolk in barracks. The mutiny left 74 useless, together with 57 military officers.
As a part of a large reconstruction drive, the federal government renamed the riot-tainted BDR the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) in 2012, altering its emblem, uniform, flag and monogram to free the power from the stigma of rise up.
Learn additionally: 824 folks charged over 2009 BDR mutiny
Mr Alam, who beforehand served as BGB chief, mentioned: “Not solely as an adviser however as a former army man and a common citizen, I desire a honest trial for the BDR killings as effectively.”
His feedback got here amid calls for for a contemporary investigation which have grown significantly loud on social media, though in 2017 a particular three-judge Excessive Court docket bench upheld the loss of life sentences of 139 BDR troopers after their trial in a decrease courtroom.
The decrease courtroom had sentenced 152 BDR members and two civilians to loss of life and 158 others to life imprisonment within the case, which is pending earlier than the Supreme Court docket’s Appellate Division for evaluate.
The defendants have been tried on fees together with organizing the mutiny, torturing and killing their officers, looting their belongings and kidnapping their kinfolk through the two-day rise up. Additionally they killed eight civilians, eight BDR troopers who opposed the revolt and one military soldier, along with the 57 army officers.
Authorized specialists earlier referred to as it the biggest prison trial in Bangladesh’s historical past, with some 800 former paramilitary troopers accused of killing 74 folks.
The insurgent troopers staged the rise up over what they referred to as “deprivation,” coinciding with the annual darbar, or assembly of rank-and-file troopers with senior commanders. The then BDR chief, Common Shakil Ahmed, was the primary casualty of the rise up.
The mutiny got here weeks after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League authorities got here to energy in elections in December 2008. In 2012, Bangladesh concluded one other part of the trial of the rise up with 11 paramilitary courts sentencing 6,011 insurgent troopers from 57 models to jail phrases of as much as seven years below the comparatively lenient BDR Act.
