Bangladesh Jails Activists For 2013 Report On Killings

A Bangladesh court has sentenced two prominent human rights activists – Adilur Rahman Khan and Nasiruddin Elan from rights group Odhikar, to two years in jail.

The two were convicted on Thursday in Dhaka after a 10-year judicial process and prosecutors said their report on security force killings in 2013 “undermined” the country’s image

However they have always denied decade-old charges that they published a report with false information and critics say the sentence is part of a crackdown ahead of elections.

Both activists have spent decades documenting thousands of alleged extrajudicial killings, disappearances of opposition activists and police brutalities in Bangladesh.

They were convicted for a report Odhikar published in 2013 about a protest by an Islamist group which had sought to impose a stricter form of the religion on Bangladeshi society.

Dozens of international human rights groups have called for the two men’s immediate release, saying the pair were denied a fair trial.

Their report documented that security forces killed at least 61 people, including children, in an overnight operation in Dhaka to remove protesters.

Khan and Elan were detained shortly after the report was published and then released on bail. The charges were only again picked up by prosecutors in recent times.

Human Rights Watch has pointed out prosecutorial action on their case did not proceed until 2021- after US sanctions were brought against Bangladesh’s elite paramilitary force for their alleged involvement in hundreds of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings since 2009.

Last week, the United Nations also highlighted that both men had faced harassment and intimidation while on bail.