COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh: Bangladesh says Akramul Haque was a meth kingpin who died after opening fire at police, one of 130 accused dealers killed in murky late-night shootouts in an increasingly bloody war on drugs.
But his wife has gone public with tapes that she says prove her husband was murdered in a set-up, causing a sensation in Bangladesh as the police crackdown faces its first real scrutiny.
Ayesha Begum says the phone conversations she recorded with Haque on the night he died contradict the official narrative — that he was armed and shot at police, who returned fire in self-defense.
“They killed him in cold blood,” Begum said from Teknaf in southeast Bangladesh, where her husband, a local councilor, was gunned down on May 27.
“They said it was a shootout. But his hands were tied when he was killed. Someone was told to untie his hands after he was shot,” she said, describing what she heard over the phone.
AFP has listened to the audio but cannot independently verify that the voices belong to Haque, his wife and young daughter.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said police had copies of the recordings and were investigating but would not elaborate.
Rights groups say that if true, the chilling tapes — which have gone viral in Bangladesh — are proof that police have committed extrajudicial killings in the campaign that began on May 15 and has also seen 15,000 people arrested.
The recordings have cast doubt on what many Bangladeshis considered a legitimate effort to stamp out drugs, most notably “yaba,” a cheap and hugely popular methamphetamine pill.
There have been calls for an immediate inquiry, with some drawing parallels to the Philippines, where the rule of law has been eroded as thousands of bodies have piled up from a deadly drug war.
A letter co-signed by 10 high-profile Bangladeshis, including independence heroes and celebrated writers, said the allegations were “unimaginable in any democratic state and society.”
“One such incident is enough to question the entire campaign and terrorize the people,” the widely published letter said.
Police say all the people killed so far were wanted drug kingpins, and all died in late-night gang wars or shootouts with police. No officers have been seriously injured.
Haque was no different, they say.
They allege he was a “top godfather” of the yaba trade in Teknaf, a key transit town for the little red pills crossing the border from labs in Myanmar.
As is the case with almost all the other shootouts, police say they found drugs and weapons on his body — in Haque’s case 10,000 yaba tablets, two guns and rounds of live ammunition.
But Haque’s family says the father of two was innocent.
“If he were a yaba dealer, we would have many properties. Yet we struggle to pay our daughters’ school fees,” his wife Begum said.
She released four recordings to the media on May 31. Haque speaks to his daughter briefly in the first three, but in the fourth he says nothing into the phone as the tape rolls.
Sometime later, gunshots ring out and Begum says her husband can be heard moaning. Another man is then heard discussing how to best plant loaded guns, bullets and yaba at the scene.
Rights groups say Bangladesh’s security forces have a record of staging executions and Haque’s alleged murder fits a pattern.
“We have documented in the past, that all too often they engage in extrajudicial killings and then make up stories of these deaths in an armed exchange or in crossfire,” said Human Rights Watch South Asia director Meenakshi Ganguly.
Local rights activist Nur Khan Liton said Haque’s case was not the first one bearing the hallmarks of a set-up.
“Some families said the victims were arrested first ... and then killed in what appeared to be staged gunbattles,” he said.
The main opposition party — whose leader was jailed this year ahead of a general election — says the killings have a political angle, with five of their supporters gunned down so far.
“They are murdering innocent people to create a climate of fear, so nobody can hold protests against the government,” said Bangladesh Nationalist Party spokesman Rizvi Ahmed.
The government estimates 400 million yaba tablets hit the streets in 2017, despite seizures numbering in the tens of millions of pills.
The drugs crisis has expanded beyond urban areas, authorities say, with addicts found in rural areas of the Muslim-majority country.
Even more pills are expected to flood the market this year after Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar for Bangladesh were employed as drug mules, police say.
The government has vowed to eradicate the “menace” with the same aggression it used to choke homegrown Islamic extremism.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has defiantly stated that “no (drug) godfather will be spared.”
“I can say this because whenever I deal with something, I use an iron fist,” she said.
Bangladesh defends drug war as murder claims surface
Bangladesh defends drug war as murder claims surface
Vance’s message in Minneapolis: Local officials must cooperate with the immigration crackdown
- Vance defended ICE agents who detained a 5-year-old boy as he was arriving home from preschool
MINNEAPOLIS: Insisting that he was in Minnesota to calm tensions, Vice President JD Vance on Thursday blamed “far-left people” and state and local law enforcement officials for the chaos that has unfolded during the White House’s aggressive deportation campaign.
The Republican vice president said, “We’re doing everything that we can to lower the temperature,” adding that Minnesota leaders should “meet us halfway.”
The Justice Department is investigating top Democrats in the state, including Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, over whether they have obstructed or impeded immigration enforcement through their public criticism of the administration. Walz and Frey have described the investigation as an attempt to bully the political opposition.
Federal officers stood in a row behind Vance as he spoke, and there were two US Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles emblazoned with the slogan “Defend the Homeland.”
His visit follows weeks of aggressive rhetoric from the White House, including President Donald Trump, who has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act — and send in military forces — to crack down on unrest. Asked about that option, Vance said, “Right now, we don’t think that we need that.”
Trump dispatched thousands of federal agents to Minnesota earlier this month after reports of child care fraud by Somali immigrants. Minneapolis-area officials, including Frey, as well as the police, religious leaders and the business community have pushed back, and outrage grew after an agent fatally shot Renee Good, a mother of three, during a confrontation this month.
After Vance’s visit, Walz said the federal government was to blame for the turmoil.
“Take the show of force off the streets and partner with the state on targeted enforcement of violent offenders instead of random, aggressive confrontation,” he wrote on social media.
Vance defends actions by ICE agents
Vance has played a leading role in defending the agent who killed Good, and he previously said her death was “a tragedy of her own making.” On Thursday, he repeated claims that Good “rammed” an agent with her car, an account that has been disputed based on videos of the incident.
Minnesota faith leaders, backed by labor unions and hundreds of Minneapolis-area businesses, are planning a day of protests on Friday. Nearly 600 local businesses have announced plans to shut down, while hundreds of “solidarity events” are expected across the country, according to MoveOn spokesperson Britt Jacovich.
Vance defended ICE agents who detained a 5-year-old boy as he was arriving home from preschool.
“When they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran,” Vance said. “So the story is that ICE detained a 5-year-old. Well, what are they supposed to do?”
The boy, who was taken by federal agents along with his father to a detention facility in Texas, was the fourth student from his Minneapolis suburb to be detained by immigration officers in recent weeks.
Asked about reporting that federal authorities are asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant, Vance said warrants would still be part of immigration enforcement. But Vance did not specify which kind of warrant he was referring to.
“Nobody is talking about doing immigration enforcement without a warrant,” Vance said. “We’re never going to enter somebody’s house without some kind of warrant, unless of course somebody is firing at an officer and they have to protect themselves.”
The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that federal immigration officers were asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter houses without a judicial warrant, according to an internal ICE memo, in what is a reversal of long-standing guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches.
Instead, the officers can use administrative warrants. Those are issued by ICE officials, as opposed to warrants signed off on by an independent judge.
Vance visited Ohio earlier in the day
During a stop in Toledo, Ohio, on Thursday morning, Vance acknowledged that immigration agents have made mistakes, while declining to be specific.
“Of course there have been mistakes made, because you’re always going to have mistakes made in law enforcement,” he said when asked about Trump’s comments earlier this week that ICE “is going to make mistakes sometimes.”
But Vance said the blame didn’t lie with the federal government.
“The number one way where we could lower the mistakes that are happening, at least with our immigration enforcement, is to have local jurisdictions that are cooperating with us,” he said.
Vance also praised the arrest of protesters who disrupted a church service in Minnesota on Sunday and said he expects more prosecutions to come. The protesters entered the church chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.”
“They’re scaring little kids who are there to worship God on a Sunday morning,” Vance said. He added, “Just as you have the right to protest, they have a right to worship God as they choose. And when you interrupt that, that is a violation of the law.”
Vance took the opportunity to criticize hometown Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur while he was in her Toledo-centered district. A crowded slate of Republicans — including former ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan — is vying to take on the longest-serving woman in Congress this fall.
Vance’s stop in Ohio was focused primarily on bolstering the administration’s positive economic message on the heels of Trump’s appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and he showed support for Republicans like gubernatorial contender Vivek Ramaswamy and US Sen. Jon Husted.
Convincing voters that the nation is in rosy financial shape has been a persistent challenge for Trump during the first year of his second term. Polling has shown that the public is unconvinced that the economy is in good condition and majorities disapprove of Trump’s handling of foreign policy.
Vance urged voters to be patient with the economy, saying Trump had inherited a bad situation from Democratic President Joe Biden.
“You don’t turn the Titanic around overnight,” Vance said. “It takes time to fix what is broken.”
