Bangladesh interim govt to re-investigate 2009 paramilitary BDR mutiny

DHAKA: Bangladesh interim government on Monday said it will "soon" start re-investigation and fair trial into the 2009 mutiny in the paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) that had killed 74 people, including 57 army officers serving in the force.

Home and Agriculture Affairs Advisor to the interim government Lt Gen (retd.) M Jahangir Alam Chowdhury said that as a citizen and a former member of the military, he was committed to ensuring justice for the tragic event.

"The proper re-investigation and fair trial process into the BDR carnage will start soon," he told the media after a meeting with Swedish Ambassador to Dhaka Reto Siegfried Renggli at his office here.

The mutiny started on February 25-26, 2009, when army officers refused to fulfil the demands made by the BDR jawans. The rebel soldiers staged the revolt at the BDR's Pilkhana headquarters in Dhaka and it quickly spread to sector headquarters and regional units of the frontier force across the country.

The rebellion saw the paramilitary soldiers turn their guns to their commanders, shooting them from close ranges or hacking and torturing them to death, hiding their bodies in sewers and hurriedly dug graves and captivating and humiliating their frightened family members in barracks. The mutiny left 74 people, including 57 army officers, killed.

Under a massive reconstruction campaign, the government renamed the mutiny-stained BDR as Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) in 2012, changing its logo, uniform, flag and monogram to free the force from the rebellion stigma.

Alam, who previously served as the (BGB) chief, said, "Not only as an adviser but as a former member of the army and a general citizen, I want a just trial of the BDR killings as well”.

His comments came as demands for a re-investigation mounted particularly on social media, though a special three-judge High Court bench in 2017 upheld 139 BDR soldiers' death penalties after their trial in the lower court.

The lower court had given death sentences to 152 BDR members and two civilians, and life imprisonment to 158 others in the case, which is pending before the apex Appellate Division of the Supreme Court for a review.

The accused were tried on charges like masterminding the mutiny, torturing and killing their officers, looting their belongings or captivating their family members during the two-day rebellion. They also killed eight civilians, eight BDR soldiers, who were opposed to the revolt, and an army soldier apart from the 57 military officers.

Legal experts earlier called it Bangladesh's biggest-ever criminal trial in which some 800 ex-paramilitary soldiers stood accused of killing 74 people.

The rebel soldiers staged the revolt for what they said was “deprivation”, coinciding with the annual Darbar or meeting of ordinary soldiers with the top brasses. The then BDR chief Maj Gen Shakil Ahmed was the first victim of the rebellion.

The mutiny occurred weeks after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government came into power in the December 2008 elections. In 2012, Bangladesh concluded another phase of the trial of the rebellion with 11 paramilitary courts sentencing 6,011 rebel soldiers of 57 units to jail terms of up to seven years under the relatively lenient BDR Act.