Bangladesh | Eight years of confinement in the “House of Mirrors”, a secret prison

(Dhaka) Held incommunicado in a Bangladeshi prison for eight years, lawyer Ahmad Bin Quasem was released on August 6 following the fall of the regime of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

“It’s the first time I’ve been able to breathe fresh air in eight years,” he said in an exclusive interview with AFP at his home. “I thought they were going to kill me.”

M^e Quasem, 40, was thrown into a muddy ditch on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka on the night of August 6, without being informed of the recent student protests that have forced ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina to flee after 15 years in power.

Responsible for his arrest, Mr.^me Hasina fled by helicopter to India on August 5 before protesters stormed her residence in Dhaka.

His departure abruptly ended an authoritarian regime accused of numerous human rights violations, including the extrajudicial executions of thousands of political opponents.

Ahmad Bin Quasem was being held in the “House of Mirrors” (Aynaghar), a jail in Dhaka run by Bangladeshi military intelligence. It is so called because the inmates languish there never meet anyone.

During his eight years of detention, Mr.^e Quasem was handcuffed 24 hours a day and kept in a windowless cell.

“Cries”

The guards were not allowed to tell him what was happening outside the four walls of his cell.

They played music from morning to night, preventing this Muslim lawyer from hearing the call to prayer from nearby mosques.

And when the music stopped, the cries of anguish from the other prisoners filled the silence.

“Little by little, I realized that I was not alone,” he says. “I heard people crying, people being tortured, others screaming.”

According to a report by the NGO Human Rights Watch published last year, Bangladeshi security forces have been responsible for “more than 600 enforced disappearances” since Mr.^me Hasina in 2009.

The existence of Aynaghar jail was made public in 2022 by Netra News, an independent news platform dedicated to Bangladesh and based in Sweden.

But the government of M^me Hasina has constantly denied its existence.

He has also consistently rejected accusations of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, saying some of those sought by their families had drowned at sea while trying to reach Europe.

Son of an Islamist leader

Ahmad Bin Quasem believes he knows why he was abducted in 2016.

He is the son of Mir Quasem Ali, a wealthy tycoon and major financial backer of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party.

The year he was abducted, his father was sentenced to death by a controversial war tribunal for crimes committed during the 1971 war of independence with Pakistan and was executed by hanging.

A group of United Nations human rights experts had called on Bangladeshi authorities to quash Ali’s death sentence and retry him in accordance with international standards.

M^e Quasem, a London barrister, represented his father at the trial and has openly criticised the tribunal, which was set up in 2010 by Mr M’s government, in the press.^me Hasina in order to muzzle the opposition, according to the Islamists.

His positions have put a target on his back, he believes today.

One night, men in plainclothes entered his home, tore him away from his family, dragged him down the stairs and threw him into a waiting car.

“I never could have believed, not even in my wildest dreams, that they would make me disappear just days before my father’s execution.”

His father was hanged four weeks after his abduction. Mr. Quasem only learned about it three years later when a prison guard accidentally let slip the information.

“Eight Lives”

After being abandoned in a ditch in Dhaka on August 6, Quasem walked through the night in hopes of finding his way home.

By a stroke of fate, he came across a medical clinic where his late father had been a director.

Recognized by a member of staff, he was able to borrow a phone to contact his family who ran to join him.

Mr Quasem was quickly made aware of the events leading up to his release: the protests, the deadly crackdown and then the fall of Mr^me Hasina.

“This was all made possible by a few teenagers,” he says incredulously. “When I see these kids leading the way […] I hope this will be an opportunity for Bangladesh to take a new direction.”

But the scars and trauma of his eight years in detention remain intact.

His face is emaciated and his former thick hair has shrunk to nothing.

Tahmina Akhter, his wife, says she was ostracized by other mothers at the school where their children attend.

On every anniversary of her husband’s disappearance, her family was harassed and told not to talk about it again.

Their eldest daughter, who was four years old at the time of the abduction, witnessed the incident and still suffers the after-effects.

“It didn’t feel like eight years,” said Mr Quasem’s mother, Ayesha Khatoon. “It felt like eight lives.”