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Bangladesh's elite security force is a 'death squad,' rights group says
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published December 15, 2006
DHAKA, Bangladesh - An elite security force in Bangladesh has become little more than a government death squad, employing torture and murdering more than 350 suspects in custody, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Thursday. The force, known as the Rapid Action Battalion, or RAB, carried out widespread torture, including boring holes in suspects with electric drills, according to a 79-page report released by the group. An RAB spokesman contacted by telephone about the report declined to comment. "Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion has become a government death squad," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Its methods are illegal and especially shameful to a nation whose citizen just won the Nobel Prize for peace," he said, referring to Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, who accepted the prize this week. The elite force was created in 2004 to combat crime. In the past, the government has defended the force's killings, saying the victims were wanted criminals or leading terrorists who died when they resisted arrest or were caught in a crossfire between the force and criminal gangs.
[Last modified December 15, 2006, 00:53:21]
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