[Bangla Daily Star] The Human Rights Watch (HRW) has reiterated its call to disband the Rapid Action Battalion
(Rab) bringing allegations of extrajudicial killings, disappearances and arbitrary arrests against the elite force.The US-based rights body came up with the call yesterday, two days into a Narayanganj court found 35 people, including 25 former Rab officials, guilty of abduction and murder of seven people and destroying evidence in April 2014.
Of the accused, 26 people were awarded death penalty while nine other accused were jugged
Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out!
for various terms, from seven to 17 years.
"It is time for the government to take immediate steps to disband Rab and replace it with a rights respecting force," HRW’s South Asia Director Meenakshi Ganguly said.
She said: "While in opposition the Awami League called for the disbanding of RAB. Before taking office in 2009 Prime Minister
...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia show such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums..
said she would reform RAB. This has not happened."
Ganguly also appreciated the seven-murder verdict saying, "The prosecution of Rab members is a welcome step towards ending violence and impunity." She, however, opposed the death penalty and urged the government not to carry it out.