Opinion: Former Bangladesh spy chief’s China go to: What it means for Dhaka and Delhi
The previous Bangladesh navy intelligence chief’s latest 12-day go to to China has raised alarm bells in New Delhi. Main-Normal (retired) Rezzakul Haider Chowdhury, who departed for China on June 6, returned to Dhaka on June 18. In accordance with a Bangladeshi intelligence report this week, “His latest journey to China and return could warrant statement resulting from his previous affiliations and the strategic sensitivity of the circumstances he was implicated in.” Sources additionally mentioned {that a} senior nationwide safety official from the Yunus authorities is at present in China, having arrived there throughout Chowdhury’s go to.
Rezzakul Haider Chowdhury, who has served as director-general of each the Directorate Normal of Forces Intelligence and the Nationwide Safety Intelligence, was jailed in the course of the Awami League regime for his alleged involvement within the smuggling of an enormous consignment of weapons meant for insurgent teams in Northeast India and Bangladesh by the Chittagong port in April 2004.
He was additionally sentenced to demise for the tried assassination of then-opposition chief and later prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, in 2004, inside three months of the Chittagong arms seizure. A number of Awami League leaders and activists have been killed within the grenade assault on a celebration rally in Dhaka, however Hasina miraculously escaped.
An ISI asset?
Chowdhury is seen in New Delhi as a “high-grade asset” of Pakistan’s Inter-Providers Intelligence, who reportedly has shut hyperlinks to Chinese language intelligence as properly. Each nations have backed insurgent teams in Northeast India for the reason that Nineteen Fifties.
United Liberation Entrance of Asom (ULFA) navy wing chief Paresh Baruah was additionally convicted within the Chittagong arms haul case after Bangladesh police seized 10 truckloads of weapons, together with 4,930 firearms (principally assault rifles), 27,020 grenades, 840 rocket launchers, 2,000 grenade launching tubes, 300 rockets, 6392 magazines, and 11,40,520 bullets, when the consignment was being offloaded from two ships at a jetty in Bangladesh’s port metropolis of Chittagong.
The large consignment of weapons, principally manufactured by the Chinese language ordnance behemoth Norinco Group, was loaded onto ships within the port of Beihai in China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Area in March 2004. Extra weapons of US- and Israeli-make have been added to the consignment and transferred to 2 Bangladeshi vessels within the Thai port of Ranong and dropped at Chittagong, the place it was seized on the evening of April 1, 2004. The weapons have been meant for ULFA and different insurgent teams in Northeast India, in addition to Islamist terror teams just like the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh.
Chittagong arms haul case hyperlink
After the ouster of the Awami League authorities in August final yr, the interim authorities headed by Muhammad Yunus launched these convicted of making an attempt to smuggle within the largest unlawful arms consignment. On January 16 this yr, the Bangladesh Excessive Courtroom acquitted six folks convicted within the Chittagong arms haul case, together with Chowdhury and former state minister for dwelling affairs, Lutfur Zaman Babar. The state didn’t problem these acquittals. The excessive courtroom additionally decreased the sentences of 5 others, together with that of ULFA chief Paresh Barua.
Babar and Chowdhury have been each very near Bangladesh Nationalist Celebration appearing chairperson Tarique Rahman, whose mom, Begum Khaleda Zia, was prime minister on the time of the large arms seizure in Chittagong. Yunus not too long ago met Tarique Rahman in London and expressed his satisfaction in regards to the assembly concerning the long run roadmap for Bangladesh.
Amongst these acquitted have been the late Matiur Rahman Nizami, former industries minister and Jamaat-e-Islami chief, Mohsin Uddin Talukder, the previous managing director of the state-run Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Restricted, KM Enamul Haque, its former normal supervisor, and Nurul Amin, former extra secretary within the industries ministry.
Fourteen people have been initially sentenced within the arms smuggling case. The courtroom abated the appeals of Brigadier Normal (retd.) Abdur Rahim, the previous director normal of Nationwide Safety Intelligence, labour provider Deen Muhammad, and Haji Sobhan, a trawler proprietor, as a result of all of them at the moment are lifeless. The sentences of 5 others have been additionally decreased.
Baruah’s sentence decreased
Paresh Baruah’s life imprisonment sentence was decreased to 14 years. The ULFA chief is reportedly holed up in a clandestine location on the China-Myanmar border. Moreover, the sentences of 4 different accused have been decreased to 10 years every. These are Akbar Hossain Khan, a former NSI subject officer, Main (retd.) Liaquat Hossain, the previous deputy director of the NSI, Wing Commander (retd.) Sahab Uddin Ahmed, and former NSI director Hafizur Rahman.
Indian intelligence officers mentioned in 2004 that the Chittagong police weren’t knowledgeable in regards to the try to usher in such an enormous amount of weapons by rogue parts within the Bangladeshi “deep state”, who have been backing Northeast Indian insurgent teams and Islamist radicals in Bangladesh. So, once they have been knowledgeable in regards to the unloading of the weapons consignment by their sources on the Chittagong docks, they rushed in to impact the seizure. However the circumstances have been cold-stored and solely made headway after the Awami League got here to energy in 2009.
In January 2014, the Chittagong Metropolitan Periods Decide’s Courtroom and Particular Tribunal-1 sentenced 14 people to demise, together with Babar, Nizami, and Baruah, within the tried assassination case. In a separate case underneath the Arms Act, additionally they acquired life sentences for his or her involvement within the smuggling case.
Issues for India
Indian safety circles appear fearful over these acquittals, and in addition the discharge of scores of identified Islamist terror leaders like Jashimuddin Rahmani, the chief of the Ansarullah Bangla Staff.
“These parts are near Pakistan’s ISI and will properly be now used to foment bother in India’s japanese states. After Operation Sindoor, the ISI and Pakistan Military might use their Bangladesh property to strike with most deniability,” mentioned a senior Indian intelligence official on situation of anonymity. “Islamabad could be lower than bothered and may very well welcome the potential worsening of India-Bangladesh relations.”
India has additionally not taken kindly to Yunus’ latest reference to India’s Northeast as a landlocked area depending on sea entry on Bangladesh, a scenario that the Nobel laureate mentioned offered a terrific alternative for the Chinese language financial system. His feedback have been made throughout a go to to China. Yunus once more urged drawing Northeast India right into a regional grouping involving Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh, which drew a pointy riposte from Indian Overseas Minister S Jaishankar.
(Author is a former BBC and Reuters correspondent and writer who has labored in Bangladesh as a senior editor with bdnews24.com)
(View Expressed on this opinion piece are these of the Creator)
