Bangladeshi lawyer recounts traumatising 8-year experience in Hasina's secret jail: Video
Ahmad Bin Quasem, a Bangladeshi lawyer, has shared his harrowing experience of spending eight years in solitary confinement in a secret jail under Sheikh Hasina's regime.
Quasem was abducted and tortured for defending his father, Mir Quasem Ali, a senior member of Bangladesh's largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, who was executed shortly after his arrest.
Quasem shared with AFP that he was blindfolded, handcuffed, and taken to a secret facility known as the "House of Mirrors" (Aynaghar), run by army intelligence. This facility was designed to ensure that detainees never saw anyone else, keeping them in complete isolation.
Throughout his incarceration, Quasem was shackled around the clock in windowless solitary confinement, with guards under strict orders not to relay any news from the outside world.
I consider myself a religious devout, and I found solace in the belief that this world is not the end, there is another one. I came to stomach the fact that this is where I'll have to die. Either I'll die here, or if there is any situation the autocratic regime has to leave, they'll most probably kill us not to keep any evidence behind," he said.
Quasem's release came unexpectedly after political upheaval and the collapse of Hasina's autocratic rule. Blindfolded and handcuffed, he was driven to the outskirts of Dhaka and thrown into a muddy ditch, finally free but with no knowledge of the national events that had led to his release.
"This entire thing, it was made possible by a few teenagers. This revolution, the forefront was teenagers and they call them Gen Z. The students were doing things that no one had done before. Police have disappeared in the streets. You see students controlling the traffic, you see students doing the work which the government is supposed to do. When you see things like that, I find hope," Quasem praised the bravado of student protestors.
