[The arrests came under sharp criticism from
human rights activists and opposition leaders in Bangladesh, who said the
authorities hoped mainly to demonstrate to the public that they were taking
vigorous action to stop the killing. The police, they said, often simply round
up young men without providing either evidence of wrongdoing or due process.]
By Julfikar Ali Manik and Ellen
Barry
 |
|
Activists in Dhaka,
Bangladesh, held portraits on Wednesday of people who were
among those killed in
recent years in attacks claimed by Islamist militants.
Credit Associated Press
|
DHAKA,
Bangladesh — The Bangladeshi
police ended on Friday a week of mass arrests in response to the three-year
campaign of killings by Islamist militants, saying that among the more than
11,000 people detained in the sweeps, 194 were believed to be linked to
militant networks.
The arrests came under sharp criticism from
human rights activists and opposition leaders in Bangladesh, who said the
authorities hoped mainly to demonstrate to the public that they were taking
vigorous action to stop the killing. The police, they said, often simply round
up young men without providing either evidence of wrongdoing or due process.
A leader of the Bangladeshi Nationalist Party
said more than 2,700 of those arrested were detained because they were critics
of the current government.
“The government is responsible for
identifying the real militants and arresting them,” said Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, the
party’s senior joint secretary general. “Now, they are arresting a large number
of B.N.P. leaders, activists and supporters to hide their failure.”
The sweeps reflect rising pressure on the
Bangladeshi authorities to respond to the eerie broad-daylight killings of
bloggers, academics and other secularist voices by members of underground militant
networks.
The police say that 151 of the 194 militants
arrested this week are associated with a single group, Jama’atul Mujahedeen
Bangladesh. All of them figure on a police list of 800 important suspected
militants, and 20 are considered “very significant arrests,” said Monirul
Islam, director of counterterrorism for the Dhaka Metropolitan Police.
When the attacks began occurring regularly in
2013, the attackers singled out figures little known outside their own
ideological circles. But in recent months, the killers have edged closer to
Bangladesh’s ruling elites. In April, a group of assailants killed a campaigner
for gay rights who was from a prominent Dhaka family. In June, in an unnerving
development for the police, attackers killed the wife of a police
superintendent known for leading counterterrorism operations.
The sweeps have received heavy television
coverage in Bangladesh. One photograph released by the police showed a village
where police officers had distributed heavy bamboo truncheons to local men,
with orders to use them if they spotted militants.
Despite the roundup, a new attack took place
on Wednesday, when three men with machetes attacked a Hindu mathematics
instructor as he tried to enter his home. The man’s neighbors heard his screams
and intervened, saving his life and catching one of the attackers, said Uttam
Kumar Paul, superintendent of the police in Madaripur, a district in central
Bangladesh.
The police say they have made some
breakthroughs as a result of the sweeps. On Thursday, Mr. Islam announced the
arrest of Sumon Hossain Patwari, 20, who is accused of cutting the throat of a
publisher with a machete last October. The publisher, Ahmedur Rashid Tutul,
survived the assault.
Mr. Patwari was a member of a five-man team
that was moved into a rented home in Dhaka for two months for extensive
training from two instructors, said Mr. Islam, the police counterterrorism
official.
Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group based
in New York, issued a harsh appraisal of the weeklong operation, saying the
police sought to compensate for what had been a “slow and complacent response
to these horrific attacks.”
Brad Adams, the organization’s Asia director,
said demonstrative arrests are typically carried out without warrants and often
leave thousands of innocent people coping with criminal cases.
“In the best-case scenario, they are taking
all these people and trying to put them through a sifter,” he said in an
interview.
The United States ambassador, Marcia
Bernicat, in remarks carried by a Bangladeshi cable news station on Thursday,
urged the Bangladeshi government to “make sure that the process is transparent”
and that police personnel face disciplinary action, including firing or
jailing, if they are found guilty of violations of human rights.
Julfikar Ali Manik reported from Dhaka, and
Ellen Barry from New Delhi.
