Bangladesh, UK reject Huji 'torture' claims

SANS News Desk: 

The British government had no involvement in the 'serious mistreatment' of Gholam Moustafa, an alleged leader of the banned Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), a British High Commission spokesman tells bdnews24.com The Bangladesh foreign ministry also told bdnews24.com that it had not received any information that Moustafa, a Briton, had been mistreated by his own law-enforcement officers.
Saida Muna Tasneem, a director general from the foreign ministry, said that the government would investigate any allegation passed to it by the British mission. An article in Wednesday's edition of the UK's Guardian newspaper claimed that Bangladesh authorities had seriously mistreated Moustafa in detention and that officials of MI5, the UK's counter-intelligence agency, may have been complicit.
The newspaper said that according to his family, "Moustafa appeared to have a swollen face when he was paraded before television cameras shortly after his arrest." It goes on to say: "When he appeared in court 11 days later [on 27 April] a journalist working for the Guardian could see that he was unable to stand throughout the proceedings, at one point sinking to his knees."
It stated that he had told a British consular official that "he had been forced to assume stressful positions for long periods during questioning at a detention centre known as the Taskforce for Interrogation Cell, where the use of torture is alleged to be common." The newspaper did not set out any actual evidence of british government complicity in the alleged torture.
A spokesman for the British High Commission told this correspondent on Thursday that the High Commission first came to know about Moustafa's arrest through a newspaper report on 16 April, the day after he was detained. "This was a Friday. On Sunday, 18th April, the next working day, we sent a formal request for consular access to the foreign ministry and we followed this up with phone calls," he said. The High Commission spokesperson said it usually takes about six to eight weeks for the Bangladesh government to give consular access.
However, he said on April 29, two weeks after his arrest, the British mission received a letter from Moustafa's UK solicitors containing allegations that he was being mistreated. On that day, he said that the High Commission sent an "urgent access request" to the foreign ministry and two days later, on May 1, it received permission to see him. The next day, consular officials met Moustafa at Dhaka Central Jail. The spokesperson declined to comment on what Moustafa had told the officials when they had met. "Anything that was said in that conversation is confidential," he said. The spokesperson told bdnews24.com that prior to this meeting, no British government official had any contact or conversations with either Moustafa or the law-enforcing officers that were involved in his detention.
"On the question of allegation of torture, we take any such allegations very seriously. The UK government's position on torture is clear. We condemn it wholeheartedly. We do not torture people and we do not ask others to do so on our behalf," he said. He added that a further application for consular access had been sought from the Bangladesh authorities. We will continue to offer Moustafa appropriate help and support in accordance with our consular responsibilities," he stated.
Moustafa was arrested in Sylhet for trying to organise and strengthen HuJI. The alleged militant was earlier arrested on Dec 2, 2007 from a house in the capital's Bashundhara residential area, where allegedly a pistol and five books calling for holy war were found in his possession. For this offence, Mostafa was sentenced to 17 years in prison in Bangladesh but secured bail from the High Court.