Bangladesh Acts to Prevent Extrajudicial Killings

Following a year-long investigation by Human Rights Watch and an aggressive advocacy campaign by international and local human rights groups, Bangladesh's interim government in January issued instructions to all law enforcement agencies to prevent the death of criminal suspects in their custody. The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), Bangladesh's elite anti-crime and anti-terrorism security force, has a record of extrajudicial killings and deaths resulting from torturing suspects. The RAB often attributes these deaths to incidents of "crossfire" that occur in the course of confronting criminal suspects, and reports indicate that, to date, 472 people in Bangladesh have been killed by RAB forces due to so-called "crossfire." In response to the interim government's directive, the RAB leadership appears to have taken measures to reduce the incidence of extrajudicial killings, and it reported for the first time since its inception that there were zero incidents of "crossfire" in the month of February 2008. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly called on Bangladeshi officials to stop these killings.