Body set up to probe jail revolt

Body set up to probe jail revolt

DHAKA (Reuter): Bangladesh has formed a commission to investigate the week-long prison uprising which security forces crushed on Sunday leaving at least nine people killed and more than 300 injured, officials said yesterday.

They said the government on Sunday night named retired High Court judge Habibur Rahman Khan to head the commission and asked him to submit a report in 30 days.

More than 2,700 inmates at the prison in Jessore in southwestern Bangladesh drove away guards and took control of their jail on Dec. 16, triggering revolts in three other prisons in the days that followed.

The mutiny was triggered by the release of 90 prisoners under an amnesty marking the country's 25th independence anniversary on Dec. 16. Prisoners angered at being excluded from the amnesty rioted, some demanding freedom while others sought better treatment and food.

All the uprisings except the one in Jessore were short-lived and ended either peacefully or with comparatively little bloodshed.

A massive 3-1/2 hour operation by nearly 1,500 police and paramilitary troops on Sunday overpowered the last remaining mutineers at Jessore.

The police, who had earlier said five prisoners were killed in the raid, yesterday said that four other people later died of their injuries, including a police officer.

Opposition parties have criticized the raid on Jessore, saying the prison revolt could have been resolved peacefully.

"The government has made the Jessore jail a slaughterhouse despite scope for resolving the crisis through dialogue," said Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, secretary-general of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

In 1980, at least 41 prisoners were killed in the country's biggest police action to end a jail mutiny in the southern town of Khulna.

There are about 76,000 prisoners in the country's 44 jails, which officials say contain three times more inmates than they were intended to hold.