The BBC has reported on a vast, secret network of detention centres in Bangladesh, allegedly operated by elite security forces under the direction of the Sheikh Hasina government.
Behind a bricked-up wall near Dhaka’s international airport, investigators recently discovered a hidden facility—pitch-black, windowless, and fortified—where political detainees allegedly had been held for years.
The location came to light following the recollections of Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem, a prominent lawyer and government critic who spent eight years imprisoned at the site and accompanied a BBC team that went to investigate the facility.
According to the BBC, Quasem was blindfolded for most of his captivity.
But the distant roar of airplanes landing was seared into his memory, leading investigators to the RAB (Rapid Action Battalion) base near the airport.
Behind the base’s main building, they found the smaller structure made of brick and concrete. Hidden in plain sight, it was a secret jail.
Quasem and hundred others were detained without charge or trial under what prosecutors now say was a systematic and wide-reaching crackdown on dissent.
Tajul Islam, the chief prosecutor for Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, confirmed to the BBC that the network of detention centres was "widespread and systematic", with potentially 500–700 similar cells scattered across the country.
The BBC was shown the cell where Quasem was kept—just 10 feet by 14 feet, with no ventilation.
The cell had blue tiles and a squatting toilet, and the heat in summer was so unbearable that Quasem would lie face-down near the doorway, trying to breathe through the crack under the door.
"It felt like being buried alive," he told the BBC, revisiting the site with reporters. He noted how perpetrators appeared to have made a last-ditch effort to destroy evidence, with broken bricks and damaged walls littering the space.
It was believed that Quasem had been held in — Aynaghor or "House of Mirrors"—a notorious facility inside Dhaka’s intelligence headquarters, but his lawyer clarified he spent most of his time in the RAB facility, except for his first 16 days, likely in the detective branch of police.
In 2016, he was representing his father, a senior member of the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami party, who was later executed.
Quasem now lives in fear, never stepping out without a hat and mask, always watching his back.
Testimonies of torture and psychological trauma
The BBC spoke to several other former detainees whose accounts of abduction, torture, and prolonged detention echoed Quasem’s.
Among them was Atikur Rahman Rasel, a 35-year-old student leader associated with the rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
He recounted being approached by men outside a mosque, forced into a vehicle, blindfolded, and later tortured.
“I wonder how I survived, whether I was really supposed to survive,” he told the BBC. Rasel says his nose was broken, and he still suffers pain in one hand from the beatings he endured.
Another detainee, 71-year-old Iqbal Chowdhury, was released in 2019 but continues to live in fear.
Accused of writing anti-India propaganda and critical posts against deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, he was allegedly subjected to electric shocks and physical assault. “I was told that if I ever revealed anything, I would be made to vanish from the world,” the septuagenarian said.
Political motive or rogue operation?
According to Tajul Islam, those imprisoned came from varying opposition backgrounds and had raised their voices against the Hasina-led government.
Hasina’s Awami League denies any involvement.
Party spokesperson Mohammad Ali Arafat claimed any such detentions were not directed by the prime minister or her cabinet, and may have stemmed from “complex internal military dynamics.”
The military has also denied running any secret detention facilities. Lt. Col. Abdullah Ibn Zaid, the army’s chief spokesperson, told the BBC: “The army categorically denies operating any such detention centres.”
Islam maintains that victims’ testimonies and the nature of the detentions point to government involvement.
“The officers concerned [said] all the enforced disappearance cases have been done with the approval, permission or order by the prime minister herself,” Islam said.
Since the fall of Hasina’s government, more than 1,676 complaints have been received by the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, formed in September last year.
But Bangladesh’s leading rights NGO estimates the true number of disappearances since 2009 is far higher—at least 709 cases documented, with 155 people still missing.
122 arrest warrants have been issued in connection with the detention centres, but no arrests have been made.
Islam insisted that justice must be served—to provide closure to victims and ensure that such human rights violations are never repeated. "We must stop the recurrence of this type of offence for our future generations," he told the BBC.
But for many victims, hope is tempered by fear. “The high officials who aided and abetted the fascist regime are still in their position,” said Quasem.