Committed to PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW
Vol. 5 Num 29 Fri. June 25, 2004  
   
Front Page


US Fact-finding Mission
Cops bar locals to talk freely


Police controlled the visit of three US embassy officials to the northwest to gather information about militant activities of an Islamist outfit, the officials alleged yesterday, hours before they left Rajshahi for Dhaka.

Law enforcers, who apparently supported the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), closely guarded the officials scaring villagers into hiding information about the group's vigilante operatives blamed for a series of killings in northwestern districts since April 1.

Villagers in the JMJB bastion with close ties to its dreaded operations commander Bangla Bhai told the officials that nobody existed as Bangla Bhai nor there was evidence of killing by his men.

Talking exclusively to The Daily Star Wednesday night, the US embassy's Political Officer Paul S. Ague said: "We have so far learnt visiting the villages that JMJB came into being to get rid of outlaws and it was successful."

"Police were always with us …

they took us to the families victimised at the hands of outlaws and they resisted the people and local journalists who were willing to talk," he said over coffee with this correspondent in the Parjatan Motel in Rajshahi city.

"They (police) told us about security problems in the villages when we wanted to talk to people freely," said Ague, who was accompanied by Regional Security Officer David Modley and Bangladeshi Press Officer Muhammad Ali.

The team arrived in Rajshahi on Tuesday to gather first-hand information about the JMJB atrocities that grabbed sharp media spotlight and visited Bagmara upazila in Rajshahi and Raninagar and Atrai in Naogaon until Wednesday evening.

Modley said most people the team met during the visit suffered at the hands of outlaws, popularly known as sarbaharas. "Yet we met a very few people who were tortured by JMJB men and we think they could tell a little of their sufferings before police," he said.

Reports from Naogaon say police allegedly prevented the victims of JMJB vigilante activities relating their ordeal to the US embassy officials.

Police reached Bargachha village and Bheti village in Raninagar hours before the US team arrived there and made sure the officials do not reach the families victimised by the JMJB, locals alleged.

The team met the family of Khejur Ali, killed and buried near their Bheti camp allegedly by JMJB men.

In the excessive police presence, sisters of Khejur could say no more about the horrific tale of the murder than they found the body in pieces.

The embassy staff visited and took photographs of Jagannath's house in Baragachha village, which was demolished by Bangla Bhai's cadres in a vigilante operation.

They then went to Bhetigram where Bangla Bhai set up a camp to torture suspected members of the banned Purbo Banglar Communist Party and Mozaffar Hossain in the same village told the officials how he was tortured by outlaws.

The family of Abdul Quiyum Badsha, killed and left hanging from a tree by the JMJB men met the officials in the Parjatan Motel and handed them a written statement. The family members told reporters that they came to Rajshahi, as police barred them to meet the team in their village.

Muhammad Musa, a schoolteacher and brother of Badsha, told Ague and Modley that Badsha was not a criminal as police and JMJB men branded him before killing. "He was killed on an order of a ruling BNP lawmaker."

"My brother was willing to contest the next parliamentary election and was working to that end," Musa told reporters, indicating the killing was politically-motivated.

Musa alleged Bangla Bhai and his associate Shahidul Islam damaged his house in Shafikpur village on May 8 before kidnapping Badsha on May 19. The operatives killed Badsha in public after announcement by microphone.

Musa alleged police implicated Badsha in false cases to link him to crimes before his death. He referred to an extortion case the police filed against Badsha on February 30, 2001 as part of a scheme to harass him.