\n Blindfolded, handcuffed and bundled out of his secret prison for the first time in eight years, Bangladeshi barrister Ahmad Bin Quasem held his breath and listened for the sound of a cocked pistol.\n<\/p>\n
\n Instead, he was tossed from a car and into a muddy ditch on Dhaka's outskirts -- alive, at liberty, and with no knowledge of the national upheaval that had prompted his abrupt release.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"That's the first time I got fresh air in eight years,\" Quasem, 40, told AFP. \"I thought they were going to kill me.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister responsible for Quasem's abduction and disappearance, had fled the country hours earlier.\n<\/p>\n
\n Her August 5 departure brought a sudden curtain down on 15 years of autocracy that included the mass detention and extrajudicial killing of her political opponents.\n<\/p>\n
\n But Quasem was in the dark.\n<\/p>\n
\n He had been confined in the \"House of Mirrors\" (Aynaghar), a facility run by army intelligence, given its name because its detainees were never supposed to see any other person besides themselves.\n<\/p>\n
\n Throughout his long incarceration, Quasem was shackled around the clock in windowless solitary confinement.\n<\/p>\n
\n His jailers were under strict instruction not to relay news from the outside world.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Screaming' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Elsewhere in the detention centre, guards blared music throughout the day that drowned out the Islamic call to prayer from nearby mosques.\n<\/p>\n
\n It prevented Quasem, a devout Muslim, from knowing when he should offer his prayers -- and from keeping track of how long had elapsed since his abduction.\n<\/p>\n
\n When the music was off, he heard the anguished sounds of other detainees.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Slowly, slowly, I could realise that I am not alone,\" he said. \"I could hear people crying, I could hear people being tortured, I could hear people screaming.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Human Rights Watch last year said security forces had committed \"over 600 enforced disappearances\" since Hasina came to power in 2009.\n<\/p>\n
\n Rumours abounded of a secret black site housing some of that number, but Aynaghar was unknown to the public until the publication abroad of a 2022 whistleblower report.\n<\/p>\n
\n Hasina's government consistently maintained afterwards that it did not exist.\n<\/p>\n
\n It also denied committing enforced disappearances, claiming some of those reported missing had drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Days before my father's execution' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Quasem is certain of the reason for his abduction.\n<\/p>\n
\n His father, Mir Quasem Ali, a senior member of Bangladesh's largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, was on trial that year.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ali was accused of running a paramilitary group that tortured pro-independence Bangladeshis during the country's 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.\n<\/p>\n
\n He and several others were indicted by a war crimes tribunal, ostensibly to bring justice to the victims of that devastating conflict, but widely seen as a means for Hasina to eliminate political opponents.\n<\/p>\n
\n Whether or not Ali was guilty, there was no way of knowing from the mockery of justice that accompanied his prosecution.\n<\/p>\n
\n Quasem, called to the bar in London and then aged 32, was running his father's defence.\n<\/p>\n
\n His regular media briefings on procedural lapses and judicial bias at the tribunal, echoed by rights groups and UN experts, put a target on his back.\n<\/p>\n
\n Plainclothes men entered his house one night, snatched him from his family, dragged him down the stairs and threw him in a waiting car.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I never could believe in my wildest dreams that they would subject me to disappearance just days before my father's execution,\" Quasem said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I kept telling them, \"Do you know who I am? I need to be there to conduct my case. I need to be there with my family.'\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Quasem's father was hanged four weeks later. Quasem did not know until about three more years had passed, when one of his jailers accidentally let it slip.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'It felt like eight lifetimes' -\n<\/p>\n
\n After the car that had carried him out of prison sped away, Quasem walked through the night to try and find his way home.\n<\/p>\n
\n By sheer coincidence, he came across a medical clinic operated by a charity for which his father had once been a trustee.\n<\/p>\n
\n He was recognised by a staff member and a phone number was frantically tracked down to contact his family, who came rushing to be with him.\n<\/p>\n
\n But first, the excited chatter of those around him filled Quasem in on the weeks of student protests that had resulted in his release.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"This entire thing, it was made possible by few teenagers,\" he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"When I see these children, these kids, leading the way,\" he added. \"I am really hopeful this will be the opportunity where Bangladesh finds a new direction.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Quasem and his family received AFP warmly into their home -- but the trauma of his detention was immediately apparent.\n<\/p>\n
\n The thick, coiffed hairdo he sported before his detention has receded into a few wild tufts, and he has lost an alarming amount of weight.\n<\/p>\n
\n His wife Tahmina Akhter said the publicity around Quasem's case left her feeling ostracised by other mothers at their children's school.\n<\/p>\n
\n The family was reliably hounded every anniversary of his disappearance and warned to stop publicising it.\n<\/p>\n
\n His two young daughters were three and four years old when he was taken away.\n<\/p>\n
\n The elder witnessed his abduction and is still scared of certain authority figures, such as the private security guard posted outside her school.\n<\/p>\n
\n The younger did not remember him at all.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It didn't feel like eight years for us,\" Quasem's mother Ayesha Khatoon told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It felt like eight lifetimes.\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Blindfolded, handcuffed and bundled out of his secret prison for the first time in eight years, Bangladeshi barrister Ahmad Bin Quasem held his breath and listened for the sound of a cocked pistol. Instead, he was tossed from a car and into a muddy ditch on Dhaka's outskirts -- alive, at liberty, and with no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-135076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n