Bangladesh police arrest Liberation War veteran, critic of Yunus-led interim govt

Bangladesh police on Monday said they arrested 1971 Liberation War veteran and former bureaucrat Abu Alam Shahid Khan, a prominent critic of Muhammad Yunus's interim government, amid a series of detentions of dissenting voices since the ouster of Sheikh Hasina's regime.

"He (Khan) has been arrested by Dhaka Metropolitan Police's detective branch in a case lodged with the Shahbagh police station," police said in a statement, without specifying the charges or disclosing the time and place of the arrest.

However, the statement said that five others were also arrested in the same drive for participating in "flash marches", impromptu street protests frequently staged by activists of the now-disbanded Awami League of deposed prime minister Hasina.

Police said they were arrested on charges of attempting to carry out acts of sabotage and defying public order.

Khan, a retired secretary in the Bangladesh government, had in recent months been criticising the interim government on social media platforms.

He is the fourth prominent critic of the interim government to be arrested in recent weeks.

On August 7, Yunus' staunch critic and former Rangpur University vice-chancellor Professor Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah was taken into custody.

On August 27, Dhaka University law professor Hafizur Rahman Curzon and journalist Manjurul Alam Panna were detained under the country's stringent Anti-Terrorism Act, along with several Liberation War veterans, including former minister Latif Siddiqui.

That arrest followed violent disruptions at a veterans' discussion organised by the newly-formed platform Moncho 71 at the Dhaka Reporters Unity auditorium.

A mob stormed the event, branding the participants "accomplices of Hasina's fascist regime" and accusing them of conspiring against the student-led "July Uprising" that toppled the Awami League government last year.

Police, who intervened ostensibly to rescue the participants, later charged them under the anti-terror law, a move widely criticised as punishing victims instead of perpetrators

Siddiqui, 87, a former minister in Hasina's cabinet who was expelled from the Awami League over a decade ago, remains in custody along with other veterans in their late 70s.

Khan, who was also a participant and had narrowly escaped the attack that time, had told PTI that no Awami League leader was present at the event.

Bangladesh has been witnessing political volatility since last year's July Uprising, when weeks of student protests forced Hasina to resign after more than 15 years in power.