Ex-Bangladeshi Leader Orchestrated Mass Disappearances, Inquiry Finds

Bangladesh’s ousted prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, and senior officials orchestrated a centralized program of enforced disappearances with thousands of likely victims, a commission set up by the country’s interim government said in a preliminary report.

The full extent of the practice during Ms. Hasina’s 15-year rule started becoming apparent after she was toppled this summer and fled to India amid widespread protests against her increasing authoritarian turn.

In the chaotic vacuum after her fall, families of the disappeared camped outside government offices and military barracks seeking news of their loved ones. Victims who had spent years in underground cells without seeing daylight came out to share their stories, including in detailed accounts in The New York Times.

Members of the commission, led by a retired judge, Mainul Islam Chowdhury, said they had received more than 1,600 reports of enforced disappearances since they began their work in late August, but they estimated the actual number of victims, mostly political opponents and dissenting voices, at two or three times that.

The report said that the practice had a “central command structure” and “was systematically designed over 15 years to remain undetectable.” It operated in a top-down manner, implicating Ms. Hasina and her closest lieutenants, most of whom have fled the country.

The commission identified at least eight secret facilities where detainees had been held, and relays accounts of what it described as institutionalized torture.