Wikileaks shed new light on the UK governments involvement with a notorious batalion call the Rapid Action Battalion(RAB) in Bangladesh, with the guardian reporting it as UK involvement in deaths squads.  Its well known for its extrajudicial killings that its been carrying out for a number of years, using the term “crossfire” to explain away the hundreds that have been gunned down in a hail of bullets.  Critics call them government death squad and draw parallels with the UK government involvement with rendition flights in recent time.

The UK government has been involved in providing training particularly in investigative interviewing techniques and rules of engagement via British policemen. The justification for the UK government appears to be as a counter-terrorism measure. But to the best of the available knowledge around it has not been established yet that a terrorist threat exist from the shores of the Bay of Bengal, in the sameway as its been clearly done with the North-West Frontier of Pakistan and parts of Yemen and Somolia where Al-Qaeda operatives have been known to exist.  This maybe about to be broken by the present investigation of 9 suspects in the UK over an alleged christmas bombing, as its been suggested all of them are Bangladeshis. We will just have to wait and see on this front while some concerns have been expressed.

It has been clear for sometime that Jihadi islamist in Bangladesh are predominately pre-occupied with turning the Peoples Republic into a Islamic state. Thus posing a real threat to the Bangladesh government including the present incumbents, the Awami League and the previous caretaking regime, rather then attacks on other states like the UK.  The authorities have yet to show definitive evidence of the latter.

In the meantime, you can be sure of legal challenges both in the Dhaka Courts and here in the UK, particularly when civilan politicans are the victims of RAB activities like Salauddin Quader Choudhury MP. His is an opposition member of the BNP who has relatives in the UK to represent them. Once again the Guardian is reporting this well.

The challenge will be for the present government in Bangladesh to close down their operations given their election pledge to end extra judicial killings, in the mist of the violent Islamist threat while dealing with war crimes and mutineers. Yet for many in the Bangladeshi public there would appear to be support for them however unsavoury their actions, something that the US ambassador, Moriarty also suggested and got picked up in the wikileaks.