Bangladesh’s army on Thursday said it had foiled a coup attempt by retired and serving officers last month that intelligence sources said was driven by a campaign to introduce Shariah law throughout the majority Muslim country.
Army intelligence discovered that Major Ziaul Haque had fled the barracks and was contacting fellow officers and ex-officers through Facebook and by cellphone to encourage them to join the plot, Brigadier General Mohammed Masud Razzaq said.
“Specific information has been unearthed that some officers in military service have been involved in the conspiracy to topple the system of democratic governance,” he told reporters.
Photo: Reuters
He said about 16 former and active officers were involved. Some had been detained and would appear before a military court.
Bangladesh has a history of coups, with army generals running the South Asian nation for 15 years until the end of 1990.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina took power in early 2009 and has since faced threats from Islamist and other radical groups.
Photo: AFP / Inter-Service Public Relations Directorate Bangladesh
A revolt in the country’s paramilitary forces in February 2009 started in Dhaka and spread to a dozen other cities, killing more than 70 people, including 51 army officers. The revolt was quelled after two days, but the country has since been shadowed by fears of further uprisings.
Sources in the army said the coup attempt was made late last month.
“The attempt has been effectively controlled and now the process is on to punish the culprits,” one military official said.
Intelligence sources said the coup attempt was fueled by a retired officer and associates in active service who were campaigning to introduce Shariah law.
Intelligence officers also said it appeared to have been planned over weeks or months by officers having close links with what they described as religious fanatics within and outside the military.
One source said the outlawed Islamist group Hizbut Tahrir had sent out a leaflet to troops saying “mid-level officers of Bangladesh army are bringing down changes soon.”
Intelligence officials said hundreds of pro-Islamist officers and soldiers had been drafted into the army in recent years and many had now reached the middle ranks.
“A band of fanatic officers had been trying to oust the politically established government. Their attempt has been foiled,” Razzaq said.
The attempted coup came at a time when the government was beginning a trial of Islamist leaders, including former Jamaat-e-Islami party chief Golam Azam.
Jammat, widely accused of opposing Bangladesh’s 1971 independence from Pakistan and having committed war crimes, is the biggest religious party in the country and have thousands of militant followers, including in the defense forces, analysts say.
Syed Ashraful Islam, general secretary of Hasina’s Awami League, said late on Thursday that the government was “determined to crush any conspiracy against the country and the government, and that those found guilty would be brought to justice.”
Addressing a rally outside Dhaka earlier this week, Hasina urged Bangladeshis to remain alert against attempts to thwart democracy in her country.
Hasina’s father and Bangladesh’s founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was killed along with most members of his family in a 1975 coup.
On Thursday, the prime minister said there had been almost 20 abortive coups since then in which many army officers had been killed.
“Some vested quarters are trying to cause unrest in the country and in the disciplined forces in a bid to destabilize the government and disrupt democracy,” she said, without naming one individual or group.
Political analysts said Hasina was pointing the finger at her rivals, especially the leaders of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, who are demanding the ousting of the government. She also warned those opposing war crimes trials, which she pledged to carry out in her 2008 election manifesto.
Retired Major-General Sayed Mohammed Ibrahim, a defense analyst, said the country and its democratic structures were reasonably immune to interference.
“Today’s news about events in the army is worrying, but will not cause any damage to democracy,” he said.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
RSS