Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus on Saturday assured the Commission of Enquiry on Enforced Disappearances to provide all possible supports to identify the people responsible for enforced disappearances between 2009 and 2024 during the ousted Awami League regime and hold them accountable.
鈥榃e will facilitate anything that you need and provide all kinds of supports,鈥� the chief adviser told聽 the commission members during a meeting, attended by several advisers and key officials, at his office in the capital.
The commission members said that they would give the government an interim report by mid-December before working further on the matter, said a press release issued by the Chief Adviser鈥檚 Office on Saturday.
Law adviser Asif Nazrul said that the government would extend the tenure of the commission even, if required, by two years and issue a necessary order with a provision for creating a legal provision for protecting the victims.
Commission chairman Justice Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury, a retired High Court Judge, told the meeting that they received some 1,600 complaints as of October 31, scrutinised 400 of them, and interviewed 140 complainants.
鈥榃e are overwhelmed by the number of complaints. Many people are still not coming to the commission, fearing retaliation from the members of law enforcement agencies. From this, we can understand that the number of incidents is much higher than what has been reported so far,鈥� said a commission member.
The commission member said that they suspected the number of enforced disappearances could be at least 3,500, and added that they were wo rking on identifying who had perpetrated the crimes and who had ordered them.
The commission member said that many of the victims were in jail, some even facing death sentences, as they were forced to give confessional statements before the court after they were shown arrested.
Some disappearance victims are believed to languish in jails in neighbouring India.
The commission members sought the government鈥檚 support for protecting the evidence of secret places where victims were kept hiding.
鈥楳any victims told us that they did not see the sun for years. They could sense that it was a new day only when breakfast was served,鈥� said a commission member.
The member requested the government to impose an injunction on foreign trips of the accused individuals and, if possible, cancel their passports.
Home adviser Lieutenant General (retired) Jahangir Alam Chowdhury, who also attended the meeting, said that they would do it immediately once they were provided with a list of accused by the commission.
Mahfuj Alam, special assistant to the chief adviser, emphasised the importance of putting the findings of the commission in the public domain and exposing the individuals who had supervised the incidents of enforced disappearances.
Advisers Salehuddin Ahmed, Nurjahan Begum, Adilur Rahman Khan, M Sakhawat Hussain, Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud, chief adviser鈥檚 special assistant Lieutenant General (retired) Abdul Hafiz, cabinet secretary Sheikh Abdur Rashid, and the principal press secretary to the chief adviser, Md Siraj Uddin Mia, were, among others, present in the meeting.
The commission also found detention centres in eight locations in the compounds of law enforcement and security agency offices, including the joint interrogation cell, popularly known as Aynaghar, on the premises of the Directorate General Forces Intelligence headquarters, in Dhaka and its surrounding areas, said the commission members at a press briefing on November 5.
Nearly 200 victims of enforced disappearance incidents that took place between January 6, 2009 and August 5, 2024 still remain untraced, they said.
