International Crimes Tribunal summons former IGP Shahidul Haque over 2016 extrajudicial killing allegations
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Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal-2 has ordered the production of former Inspector General of Police (IGP) A.K.M. Shahidul Hoque in connection with a case involving crimes against humanity. The directive requires the former police chief to appear before the court on Thursday regarding the 2016 killing of Major (retd) Jahidul Islam. The tribunal’s prosecutor, Shaikh Mahdee, confirmed the development, noting that Hoque is currently detained in a separate legal matter.
The case stems from a complaint filed on August 10 last year by the victim’s wife, Zebunnesa Islam, who alleges that her husband was executed by security forces under the guise of an anti-militancy operation. According to the complaint, Major (retd) Jahidul was killed on September 2, 2016, during a police raid in the Rupnagar area of Mirpur. Zebunnesa alleges that she and her two young daughters were subsequently abducted and subjected to more than four months of enforced disappearance and brutal torture.
বিজ্ঞাপন
The complaint names several high-ranking former officials as perpetrators, including former IGP Shahidul Hoque, former Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Detective Branch chief Monirul Islam, former Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit chief Md. Asaduzzaman, former Deputy Commissioner of the Mirpur division Masud Ahmed, and former Rupnagar police station officer-in-charge Sahid Alam, alongside unidentified personnel.
Zebunnesa’s testimony details a harrowing ordeal in which she was blindfolded and held in an undisclosed location, widely referred to as an “Aynaghar,” or “house of mirrors.” She asserts that interrogators attempted to coerce her into confessing that she and her husband were militants, threatening that she and her daughters would meet the same fate as her husband if she refused. She claims that she was held for four months and seven days, during which time authorities staged separate incidents in Azimpur and Ashkona to falsely label her children and her as militants before ultimately filing a series of criminal cases against her.
বিজ্ঞাপন
Following her eventual release on bail after years of incarceration, Zebunnesa states that the administration under former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina revoked her bail in 2022 to prevent her from pursuing justice for her husband’s death. She was returned to prison and remained there until August 31, 2024, following the collapse of the Hasina government during the student-led uprising earlier that month.
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