Jt Interrogation Cell evidence destroyed after August 5
Evidence of "Aynaghar" was destroyed even after August 5, 2024, to hide the complicity of the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), said the commission investigating enforced disappearances in its report to Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus.
The commission was formed on September 15, 2024, and it inspected the Joint Interrogation Cell (JIC) housed inside the DGFI headquarters on September 26, 2024.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. At the time of the commission's visit, Maj Gen Muhammad Faizur Rahman was the director general of the DGFI. He was made the DG on August 11, 2024, replacing the AL-era DGFI chief Maj Gen Hamidul Haque. Faizur was replaced on October 17.
"The post-August 5 partial structural alterations of the JIC at the DGFI headquarters include walls that have been painted over where prisoners testified that they had carved out their details," said the report, a section of which was shared with the media by the Chief Adviser's Press Wing yesterday.
"The then director general of the DGFI assumed his role several days after August 5, 2024. And yet, at least some of this evidence manipulation was carried out as recently as the day before our visit .... because we found the paint wet at the time of our visit. The wet paint and incomplete structural modifications clearly indicated a hurried attempt to conceal crimes," said the report.
"While the then DG argued that he was not directly involved in crimes committed before his tenure, his immediate response to manipulate evidence underscores the coercive power of this culture of impunity," added the report.
"His actions, ostensibly to shield perpetrators of past crimes, went against his own self-interest and professional integrity.
"During Sheikh Hasina's rule, a culture of impunity became entrenched within the security forces. It was evident in our conversations with the officers of both civil and military forces that not only did most of them never expect to be ever held accountable for their crimes, they also did not necessarily view the crimes as crimes."
Talking about the security forces, the report stated, "Enforced disappearances of people accused of being terrorists, for instance, were regularly brushed aside [by officials they interviewed] as insignificant and not worthy of the commission's attention. Similarly, custodial torture was nonchalantly described as a routine matter, indispensable to crime fighting.
"This pattern of doctoring of evidence and non-cooperation was not isolated to the DGFI. Across various security forces, evidence of crimes spanning over 15 years has been systematically manipulated. It was done not only by those in power till August 5, 2024 …, but also by those who assumed leadership afterwards.
"It reveals the pervasive and coercive nature of the culture of impunity, which compels even those not originally directly involved in the commission of offences to protect and perpetuate it."
The report said that some prison guards used to be kind towards victims but were compelled to commit crimes.
"Whilst many prison guards shared the cruelty of their high-ups, a number of prison guards were reportedly kind—sharing food, information, and expressing empathy by acknowledging the innocence of the detainees. To the prisoners, they excused their inability to confront the injustice they personally oversaw by pleading that they were slaves to command."
The report quoted the testimony of a survivor who was thrown in front of an oncoming vehicle.
The victim, a supporter of Jamaat-e-Islami, recounted how a police officer, while throwing him in front of the oncoming vehicle, apologised for doing so by saying, 'Please forgive me. I have no choice', said the report. The person survived because the vehicle was able to swerve at the last moment.
The report said that women were forcibly disappeared along with their children. "For example, one female victim we interviewed was detained for a month while she was pregnant, with her three-year-old and 18-month-old children incarcerated alongside her. She reported being beaten by a male officer despite being pregnant," said the report.
"A young child we interviewed recalled being held in CTTC [Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit] along with her mother when the child had been only six years old."
The report narrated another case in which a mother and her young daughter were picked up and detained overnight at the then Rab-2 headquarters.
"The next day, the daughter was thrown out of a vehicle onto the streets. According to the family, an imam found the child and returned her to them. We took this girl, now a grown-up, to suspected Rab facilities, where she was able to definitively identify one of the rooms where she had been held that night. Her mother never returned," it said.
"In one harrowing account, a male victim described how his wife and newborn baby were brought to a police station, where the child was reportedly denied milk from its mother as a form of psychological torture directed at him," said the report.
The report went on to say that it is highly likely that a significant portion of security personnel did not directly engage in these crimes of their own volition but were compelled to do so by their power-hungry supervisors.
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