Bangladesh police arrested a former opposition lawmaker on Tuesday in connection with a bloody mutiny at a military base earlier this year, a senior police officer said. Nasiruddin Pintu was picked up in the capital Dhaka, police chief Shahidul Haq told AFP, moments after he sought a court order that would bar police from arresting him.
"Pintu was arrested in connection with the border guard mutiny," said Haq in reference to the uprising in February that left at least 74 people dead, including 57 senior army officers. Joint police commissioner Amulya Bhusan told AFP that Pintu "is a suspect and is being interrogated for a number of cases". Pintu, a Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) lawmaker from 2001-2006, was last week accused in a high-powered government probe of aiding thousands of rebel border guards to flee a military camp.
"Former BNP lawmaker Nasiruddin Ahmed Pintu helped them (mutineers) flee by arranging engine-run boats to cross the river", the investigation report said, a copy of which was obtained by AFP. The river runs alongside the military camp where the border guards killed and dumped the bodies of their officers in a gruesome revolt that shocked the country and threatened the survival of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's newly elected government.
The country's home minister Sahara Khatun has said that the government would take "stern action" against those named in the probe. The report - commissioned by the government and released on 27 May - is the first full official finding on the cause of the deadly February 25 mutiny by rank-and-file soldiers.
Comments
Comments are closed.