Bangladesh: The Chittagong Arms haul case

Late night on April 1, 2004, two trawlers - Kazadan and Amanat- berthed at the Chittagong Urea Fertilizer Limited (CUFL) jetty. Their lethal cargo consisted of 4,930 sophisticated firearms of different types, 840 rocket launchers, 300 rockets, 27,020 grenades, 2,000 grenade-launching tubes, 6,392 magazines and 11.41 million bullets.

Ten years after the incident, a Chittagong Metropolitan Special Tribunal sentenced 14 people to death on January 30, 2014. These included Jamaat Ameer, the then Industries Minister and war crimes accused Matiur RahmanNizami; former BNP Minister of State for Home Lutfozzaman Babar and several intelligence officers, including the former Director General of National Security Intelligence (NSI) Brigadier General (retired) Abdur Rahim, former NSI director Wing Commander (retired) Shahabuddin and former DGFI director Major General (retired) Rezzakul HaiderChowdhury etc.

What makes the 2004 Chittagong Arms haul so lethal is both the nature of the consignment and the conspiracy behind it. The arms were enough to keep the North-East bleeding for years. Equally ominous was the involvement of Pakistan's ISI with the Bangladesh agencies under a Khaleda Zia-led BNP-Jamaat Government that allowed Pakistan to use its state machinery and territory to smuggle arms for waging war in eastern India.

The investigation, and especially the interrogation of Brigadier General (retired) Abdur Rahim, Wing Commander (retired) Sahabuddin and local smuggler Hafiz, revealed the full contours of the Pakistan ISI-BNP-ULFA conspiracy.

Firstly, Pakistani business tycoon Abdul RazzakYakub, founder of the Dubai-based ARY Group, and Pakistan's ISI were directly involved with the plan of smuggling the seized arms. Salman Iqbal, a Pakistani national who was Managing Director of the ARY Group had visited Dhaka on a couple of occasions on the pretext of establishing the ARY TV channel in the country.

During these visits, he held a number of meetings at NSI safe houses in Dhaka. These meetings were attended by BNP State Minister for Home Lutfozzaman Babar, an NSI operative, together with ISI officials posted in the Pakistan High Commission in Dhaka and the ULFA Commander Paresh Barua. In these meetings, details of payments to facilitate the smuggling of arms were worked out.

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