What happened inside secret jails for Sheikh Hasina’s critics

Shocking details have emerged about secret prisons in Bangladesh where dissidents of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled to New Delhi after the dramatic collapse of her government in August, are kept.
According to a report in The New York Times, several victims who were forcefully abducted have come forward to share details of the “Aynaghor” or “House of Mirrors”.
Hundreds of people were allegedly abducted by security forces over their dissent against the Hasina-led Awami League government since 2009.
Human rights organisations estimate that more than 700 people were forcibly disappeared between 2009 and 2024. They say the real could even be higher, adding that harassment from government agencies made it difficult for them to document the cases.
According to the New York Times report, about 450 of those known to have disappeared were released, sometimes months and years later. They were ordered to maintain strict silence.
About 80 people were killed and their bodies were sent to their families, while about 150 victims still remain unaccounted for.
Maroof Zaman, a former Bangladeshi ambassador to Qatar and Vietnam who spent 467 days in the prison before re-emerging in 2019, claims that the House of Mirrors was situated on a military garrison in Dhaka.
He attributes his claim to the discipline and precision observed by the guards at the prison, and also to the morning parades that he could hear from his cell. “Every Friday, you could hear the children singing,” Zaman told The New York Times.
According to the report, the facility was designed with long corridors with half a dozen rooms facing away from each other. Each cell had a large exhaust fan meant to drown out the guards’ chatter and torment the prisoners.
The goal behind this was to torture the mind, The New York Times said in its report.
The inmates were physically tortured during interrogations in the early days. Medical checkups of inmates were regular and haircuts were given every four to six months.
Zaman told The New York Times that during interrogation, he was hooded and punched repeatedly in the face. He was shown printed copies of all of his social media and blog posts, and was questioned on specific paragraphs.
“We spent so much money printing your posts. Your father will give us all this money back?” the interrogators use to ask him.
Abdullahil Amaan Azmi, former army general, who was detained in the ‘House of Mirror’ apparently because his father had been a senior Islamist leader, told the newspaper that he had been blindfolded and handcuffed 41,000 times during his eight years in captivity.
“I did not see God’s sky, the sun, the grass, the moon, the trees,” Azmi told the newspaper.
“There is no language in which I can explain the humiliation and pain I felt,” he said, adding that he prayed for dignified death during his time at the facility.