Lawyer Ahmed Bin Kassim, who was held incommunicado for eight years, was released on August 6 following the fall of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's regime.
“It's the first time I've been able to breathe fresh air in eight years,” he told AFP in an exclusive interview at his home. “I thought they were going to kill me.”
Qasim, 40, was dumped in a muddy ditch on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka, on the night of August 6, without being told about the recent student protests that forced ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee after 15 years in power.
Ms Hasina, who was responsible for her arrest, fled by helicopter to India on August 5 before protesters stormed her home in Dhaka.
His departure abruptly ended an authoritarian regime accused of numerous human rights abuses, including the extrajudicial executions of thousands of political opponents.
Ahmed bin Qassim was detained in the “House of Mirrors” (Iyengar), a prison in Dhaka run by the Bangladeshi military’s intelligence services. It is so called because the detainees held there do not meet anyone.
During his eight years in detention, Mr. Qasim was handcuffed 24 hours a day and held in a windowless cell.
“shouting”
The guards were not allowed to tell him what was happening outside the four walls of his cell.
They play music from morning to night, and prevent this Muslim lawyer from hearing the call to prayer from the nearby mosques.
When the music stopped, the screams of pain from the other inmates filled the silence.
“Little by little, I realized I was not alone,” he says. “I heard people crying, others being tortured, others screaming.”
According to a report published by the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch last year, Bangladeshi security forces have been responsible for “more than 600 enforced disappearances” since Hasina came to power in 2009.
The existence of Iyengar Prison was announced in 2022 by Netra News, an independent news platform dedicated to Bangladesh based in Sweden.
But Ms Hasina's government has consistently denied its existence.
He has also consistently rejected accusations of enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killings, saying some people sought by their families drowned at sea while trying to reach Europe.
Son of an Islamic leader
Ahmed bin Qassim believes he knows why he was kidnapped in 2016.
He is the son of Mir Quasem Ali, a wealthy businessman and the main financial backer of Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest Islamist party in Bangladesh.
The year he was kidnapped, his father was sentenced to death by a controversial war court for crimes committed during the 1971 war of independence with Pakistan and was hanged.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has called on the Bangladeshi authorities to quash Ali's death sentence and retry him in accordance with international standards.
Mr. Kassim, a member of the London Bar, represented his father at the trial. The press has been vocal in its criticism of the court, which was set up by Ms. Hasina’s government in 2010 to silence dissent, according to Islamists.
Today it is believed that his positions put a target on his back.
One night, men in civilian clothes entered his home, snatched him from his family, dragged him down the stairs and threw him into a waiting car.
“I would never have believed, even in my wildest dreams, that they would make me disappear just days before my father was executed.”
His father was hanged four weeks after his kidnapping. Mr. Qassim only learned of this three years later from a prison guard who let the information slip.
“Eight Lives”
After Qasim left him in a ditch in Dhaka on August 6, he walked all night hoping to find his way home.
In a twist of fate, he came across a medical clinic where his late father was the director.
An employee recognized him and was able to borrow a phone to call his family, who ran to join him.
Mr. Qasim was soon informed of the events that had preceded his release: the demonstrations, the deadly crackdown and then the fall of Ms. Hasina’s regime.
“All this has been made possible by a few teenagers,” he says in disbelief. “When I see these kids leading the way… I hope this is an opportunity for Bangladesh to take a new direction.”
But the scars and trauma of his eight years in detention remain intact.
His face was thin and his thick hair from yesterday had turned into drops.
His wife, Tehmina Akhtar, says she has been ostracised by other mothers at the school their children attend.
On every anniversary of her husband's disappearance, her family was harassed and told not to talk about it anymore.
Their eldest daughter, who was four years old at the time of the kidnapping, witnessed the scene and still bears the scars of the aftermath.
“It doesn’t feel like eight years have passed,” says Mr. Qasim’s mother, Aisha Khatun. “It feels like we’ve lived eight lives.”
