By 
GHRD Research Team
by Taken, retrieved from Pixabay, 18 September 2014
Hundreds of opponents to former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Hasina’s government have come forward to tell their story on the torture and human rights abuses they endured while imprisoned in secret prison complexes around Bangladesh.
A BBC news edition published on April 16th 2025, revealed the discovery of “torture cells” built next to an international airport in Bangladesh.
These cells were part of a bigger clandestine prison complex built only a few miles from Dhaka’s International Airport, one of the country’s busiest due to its proximity to the capital. The findings inside the cells and the stories of survivors like Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem leave no doubts as to the heinous human rights abuses perpetrated within the complex.
Mr. Quasem is a critic of Bangladesh’s ousted leader, and for this reason, he was arrested and held in these secret cells for eight years. He was blindfolded for most of the time, but he is a valuable witness to the horrendous human rights abuses he and other inmates endured.
According to the investigators of this case, the prison complex comprised hundreds of inmates who had been imprisoned for their dissenting opinions about former Bangladesh Prime Minister Hasina’s government and who were released after Hasina’s government was overthrown in August 2024.
Further investigations uncovered that the people running the prison complex belonged to the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite counter-terrorism unit, responding directly to Hasina. The chief prosecutor for the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh said that the forced disappearances, imprisonment, and subsequent torture carried out in the prison premises were all approved by the former Prime Minister herself.
NGOs active in Bangladesh indicated that the large scale of the imprisonment and the carefully planned forced disappearances suggest this was part of Hasina’s firm repression of the opposition. Many former prisoners were arrested for supporting the rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), speaking up against Hasina’s party, and posting on social media pictures in favour of anti-India and Islamic movements.
Although they were released seven months ago, Quasem and other prisoners still live in fear of their abusers, who are still free and unlikely to face consequences for their criminal actions. Interviewed separately, their descriptions of the cells and the abuses received match: after being blindfolded and handcuffed, they were kept in dark, concrete cells with no access to the outside world, where they would be subjected to torture and beatings, often involving electric shock. Some denounce that their cells were so narrow they couldn’t even stretch their legs.
BBC journalists followed Quasem inside his cell, witnessing the atrocity of the abuse: cells were windowless cubic structures made of brick and concrete, all narrow, dark, and windowless. They smelled musty, and the ceilings were so low that an average-sized person would not be able to stand up straight when inside. No natural light would ever get inside the cell, and, thus, the inmates would not be able to tell whether it was day or night. The feeling of “being buried alive” has been used by many former convicts to describe how they felt inside the cells. Some cells had a hole in the ground to be used as a toilet, but many didn’t. Additionally, no ventilation was present in the cells, making them unbearably hot during the summer.
The prison walls are now partially destroyed following a desperate attempt by the prison guards to destroy evidence of their abuses.
Overall, more than 700 prison complexes like the one in Dhaka were found across Bangladesh, showing that repression and torture were systematic and widespread.
Although painful, both Quasem, Rasel, and the other former inmates who spoke to the BBC, said that going back into the prison was necessary to show the world the horrors perpetrated therein. Quasem and all the other survivors hope that sharing their stories with the world could make international justice intervene and hold the perpetrators accountable (BBC News, 2025).
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