Audio clip 'captures Bangladeshi police killing drugs suspect'

লিখেছেন লিখেছেন নুর হুসাইন ০৬ জুন, ২০১৮, ১০:৩৯:০১ রাত

Audio clip 'captures Bangladeshi police killing drugs suspect'

Death of Akramul Haque raises fresh fears over extrajudicial killings in drugs crackdown

Michael Safi and Shaikh Azizur Rahman

Wed 6 Jun 2018 12.03 BST Last modified on Wed 6 Jun 2018 15.10 BS

A recorded phone conversation that appears to capture Bangladeshi police killing a local politician has raised fresh concerns over a Philippines-style drugs crackdown, after 130 people were shot dead in three weeks.

Bangladesh’s elite Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) said last week it had killed Akramul Haque in a gunfight on 27 May. It accused Haque, 46, of being a drug dealer and claimed to have found two guns and thousands of methamphetamine pills on his body.

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Four days later, at the Cox’s Bazar press club in southern Bangladesh, his wife, Ayesha, played a series of phone conversations she had recorded with her husband that night, which she claims paint a different picture.

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In the first two, Haque, a municipal councillor with the ruling Awami League party, tells his daughter he has been asked to visit the office of a local government official. He speaks in a hushed tone in the third call as he tells his daughter he is travelling to another location for “urgent work”.

“I am in a vehicle, I cannot speak more now,” he says on the recording, which the Guardian has heard but cannot verify.

Ayesha makes the final call, which connects, but only the muffled voices of several men can be heard. A man she identifies as Akram can be heard saying, “I am not involved”. Seconds later, a gunshot is heard, then a man groaning, then another shot. Ayesha and her daughters start wailing on the other end of the line.

As the family continue shouting for Akram to answer, other voices can be made out over the noise of a blazing siren. “Take out the bullets,” one says. An order is given to scatter empty cartridges at the scene. “Have his hands been untied?” another voice asks.

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