Former Army chief calls Operation Clean Heart’s legal cover a ‘licence to kill’

Former Bangladesh Army chief Iqbal Karim Bhuiyan has described the indemnity granted to security forces involved in the BNP-Jamaat-e-Islami government’s Operation Clean Heart as a “licence to kill”, arguing that it normalised enforced disappearances, custodial deaths, and impunity within the military and intelligence agencies.

He made the remarks on Sunday during a testimony at the International Crimes Tribunal-1 in a crimes against humanity case over enforced disappearances and killings allegedly carried out by the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI).

The two-member tribunal, led by Justice Md Golam Mortuza Mozumder with Justice Md Shofiul Alam Mahmood as the other member, began recording testimony in the case with Bhuiyan’s statement.

He testified for nearly two hours, detailing the emergence of what he termed a “culture of killing and disappearance” within the armed forces and sharing his experiences with the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) during his tenure as chief of Army Staff.

Widely known as IKB, Iqbal Karim Bhuiyan served as Army chief from Jun 25, 2012 to Jun 25, 2015 during the Awami League government.

In his testimony, he said: “The culture of killing existed in the Army from before; the culture of enforced disappearance developed later. If we assume killings began only after 2008, that would be incorrect.

“In reality, the culture of killing began soon after independence. At various times, the Army was deployed outside cantonments to maintain law and order. Alleged criminals were detained, brought to Army camps, and tortured during interrogation, leading to deaths in some cases.”

He said the number of such incidents was “limited” initially and that investigations and legal measures were later used to “regularise” them.

Referring to military operations in the Chattogram Hill Tracts, Bhuiyan said that deaths which came to the authorities’ attention were investigated and those responsible were “appropriately punished”.

He also explained how military training contributed to desensitisation. “During training, soldiers are ‘dehumanised’ so that they gradually stop seeing people as human beings and instead view them as targets.

“At firing ranges, shooting at human-shaped targets removes the psychological barrier to killing.

“Keeping this in mind, the Army should never have been mixed with civilian policing. Yet that is exactly what happened in 2003 with the formation of RAB.

“It was a disastrous and dangerous decision. Military training was unsuitable for RAB deployment.”

Bhuiyan said some extrajudicial killings occurred between 2003 and 2006 and that “many killings took place during Operation Clean Heart even before RAB was formed”.

Operation Clean Heart was conducted from Oct 16, 2002 to Jan 9, 2003 by joint forces after the BNP-Jamaat alliance came to power. On Feb 24, 2003, the government enacted the Joint Drive Indemnity Act, 2003, granting legal protection to those involved.

More than a decade later, the High Court declared the law unconstitutional and void.

“According to military sources, 12 people died of heart attacks,” Bhuiyan said.

“Human Rights Watch put the number at 60. Later, all Clean Heart members were indemnified. In reality, this indemnity was a licence to kill.”

He told the tribunal that between 2007 and 2009, DGFI emerged as the “country’s primary controlling authority”, routinely picking up individuals, holding them in cells, and interrogating them. Many detainees were ministers and political figures.

“They even picked up and tortured the BNP’s Tarique Rahman. From that point, detaining civilians and keeping them in cells became habitual. They began to believe they could pick up anyone and do anything, confident they would ultimately escape accountability.”

Bhuiyan linked the declaration of emergency rule to tensions over extending the chief justice’s retirement age ahead of the 2007 election.

During the emergency, he said, changes took root within military culture: renewed political involvement, a sense of dominance, divisions between senior and junior officers, the rise of a cash culture, and blind obedience to superior orders.

Referring to the 2009 Pilkhana massacre after the Awami League returned to power, Bhuiyan said 57 military officers and 17 civilians were killed.

After the mutiny was suppressed, BDR members were confined and interrogated at headquarters.

Human Rights Watch estimated that about 50 BDR members died under torture by RAB and military personnel during interrogation. Courts later sentenced 152 BDR members to death, 161 to life imprisonment, and 256 to varying prison terms.

Bhuiyan said the mutiny intensified “anti-India and anti-Awami League sentiment” among Army officers, deepened senior-junior divisions, sidelined professional officers in favour of loyalists, and involved the military in national projects, ultimately corrupting the institution.

“The main reason was that Sheikh Hasina believed a corrupt Army would be safer for her,” he said.

He testified that learning from what she viewed as weaknesses during her 1996–2001 term, Hasina moved after 2009 to establish “absolute dominance” over the state and administration.

“To do so, she amended the constitution to abolish the caretaker government system, ensured death sentences for political leaders through the International Crimes Tribunal, and inserted the death penalty as punishment for constitutional violations.”

Bhuiyan said Hasina appointed her relative former major general Tarique Ahmed Siddique as security advisor to control the military.

“Major general Siddique soon established himself as a super chief between the prime minister and the service chiefs,” he said, adding that he brought agencies including DGFI, NSI, RAB, NTMC, Ansar, and BGB under his control.

He identified the emergence of four “cycles”: a crime cycle using DGFI, NSI, RAB, and NTMC to suppress opponents through killings and disappearances; a deep-state cycle controlling military policy; a procurement cycle influencing purchases; and an engineering cycle leveraging national projects as a major source of illegal income.