Each operation is carefully planned, sometimes for months, the target's every move analyzed and monitored by one of 15 units inside Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). Victims are usually picked up late at night and whisked away to the special police force's facilities.
While few survivors dare to speak out about their ordeal, one man said he could not remain silent. Deep into a warm November night in 2021, officers from the elite force stormed a house in an upmarket neighborhood in Dhaka, Nafiz Mohammed Alam, a self-assured 23-year-old sporting a stylish blue suit, recalls.
First, he says, officers beat and even waterboarded him, then they invited several journalists to his house. Typically, journalists are called to witness arrests or crime scenes and broadcast the official version of events, with no room for critical coverage.
That night's news reports only showed one side of the story: uniformed RAB officers surrounding Alam, the footage zooming into rows of bottles filled with alcohol, proof that the suspect was allegedly running an illegal liquor delivery business.
What the cameras didn't show was how the force's officers planted the bottles around his house before the journalists could show up, Alam notes, a detail that could not be independently verified. However, once the media left, he says he was forced into an unmarked van and taken to RAB 1, a large building just off the road to Dhaka's airport.
There, he says, he was taken to a windowless room on a...
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