[Bangladesh 2024 Campaign] 19. Gangster regime

Corruption in Bangladesh during the Hasina regime was not limited to ministers and other bureaucrats. Corruption involving the military, police, and even gangsters was allegedly widespread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6v_levbUN4

 

On February 1, 2021, <Al Jazeera> published an in-depth investigation, “All the Prime Minister's Men,” in which Aziz Ahmed joined the army in 1981 and served as Hasina's personal bodyguard in the mid-1990s before rising through the ranks to become the chief of army staff in 2018.

 

 

In 2014, Hasina won a landslide victory in the general election, during which the Border Guard intervened in the election, detaining and torturing opposition leaders and preventing opposition supporters from entering polling stations. Aziz Ahmed was the head of the Border Guard at the time.

https://netra.news/2021/the-murder-trial-of-the-three-ahmed-brothers/

The murder trial of the three Ahmed brothers

 

In May 2018, shortly before Aziz Ahmed was appointed as the chief of army staff, Joseph Ahmed, who was sentenced to death for murder in 1996 and commuted to life imprisonment in 2015, was pardoned by President Mohammad Abdul Hamid.

 

 

Joseph Ahmed, along with Haris Ahmed and Anis Ahmed, were charged with the May 7, 1996, killing of opposition leader Mostafizur Rahman, and at the trial on May 25, 2004, Joseph Ahmed was sentenced to death and Haris Ahmed and Anis Ahmed to life imprisonment. Haris Ahmed fled from arrest, while Anis Ahmed was bailed out midway through the trial and also ran away.

 

 

Joseph, Harris, and Anis Ahmed are the brothers of Aziz Ahmed. While Aziz pursued a military career, the rest of the brothers were active in organized crime. <Al Jazeera> reported that the military and the gangster family have been working closely together to extend Hasina's rule.

 

 

<Al Jazeera> also reported that Prime Minister Hasina, concerned that Joseph Ahmed's prison sentence would disqualify Aziz Ahmed for the appointment as the chief of army staff, asked President Mohammad Hamid to pardon Joseph Ahmed. President Mohammad Hamid was elected by the Awami League and served as president for 10 years, from April 2013 to April 2023.

 

 

<Al Jazeera> also alleged that the Ahmed brothers used a combination of military influence and gangster activity to repress citizens in order to prop up the Hasina regime. “They (=RAB) are our thugs, so why do we need our own thugs,” Joseph Ahmed is quoted as saying in the <Al Jazeera> report.

 

 

The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) is a military organization commanded by the chief of army staff, Aziz Ahmed. The RAB has been accused of thousands of enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings in its crackdown on opposition, media, and dissidents.

 

The Ahmed brothers have also used military and gangster connection to influence elections, with <Al Jazeera> reporting that Joseph Ahmed was quoted as saying that he “paid a $600,000 bribe to win the Awami League's nomination.”

 

 

<Al Jazeera> also reported that Joseph Ahmed laundered money in Budapest, Hungary and Paris, France. Joseph Ahmed opened and closed dozens of businesses in Budapest and Paris in a short period of time, where he used them as a way to legitimize money coming from Bangladesh because they were primarily cash businesses.

 

 

The brothers are also suspected of monopolizing Bangladesh's military contracts and funneling significant sums of money out of the country, for which the interim government's anti-corruption commission is investigating their money flows. (jc, 11/20/2024)