The interim government’s influence extends deep into the judiciary. Judges are pressured; prosecutors are politicized.

Instead of being released on bail granted by the High Court Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, on 4 September 2025, Khodadad Khan Pitu (60), former President of the Naogaon District Bar Association and President of the Human Rights Lawyers’ Forum, Naogaon, was re-arrested by Naogaon Sadar police from the gate of Naogaon District Jail.

On 5 September, he was produced before the court in connection with a 2024 case filed over an incident in 2022 under the Explosive Substances Act, and the court ordered him sent to jail.

Earlier, in the early hours of 17 July 2025 (around 2:30 a.m.), police had arrested him from his residence in the Chokmoyrdi Post Office area of Naogaon town. Although his name was not initially included in the 2024 case of vandalism and arson at the local BNP office, it was later added during the investigation, and he was sent to prison after being presented in court. He subsequently obtained bail from the High Court Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh.

Prior to that, he had voluntarily surrendered and obtained bail in another case filed during the July movement against attacks on students and ordinary citizens.

On 2 September 2025, twelve lawyers in Barguna District surrendered before the District and Sessions Judge in a case related to vandalism and arson at a BNP office. The court denied them bail. Eight days later, the High Court granted six weeks’ bail to ten of them. Yet, moments before their release, they were re-arrested under a newly fabricated case filed under the Special Powers Act by Betagi Police Station and sent straight back to prison.

Among those re-arrested were Mahabubul Bari Aslam, former President of the Barguna District Bar Association, and Advocates Mojibur Rahman, Saimum Islam Rabbi, Humayun Kabir Poltu, and Nurul Islam. Their brief taste of freedom became a cruel illusion, underscoring a chilling reality: even High Court bail cannot protect lawyers from politically engineered persecution.

These are not an isolated incidents. Rather, between August 2024 and September 2025, Justicemakers Bangladesh in France (JMBF) documented 75 incidents of imprisonment affecting 203 lawyers. Each case reveals a deliberate strategy: fabricated charges, coerced surrenders, manipulated court procedures, and prolonged pre-trial detentions.

The largest share of these imprisonments arose from attempted murder (15 incidents, 103 victims) and murder (25 incidents, 43 victims)—serious accusations crafted to discredit and intimidate. Other allegations include sabotage, vandalism, seditious conspiracy, and extortion, laws selectively revived to target politically active lawyers or those defending victims of state abuse.

The regime has weaponized the law itself, turning courts into instruments of fear rather than justice. Lawyers affiliated with the Bangladesh Awami League (BAL) have been particularly targeted, with legal compliance—surrendering or filing bail applications—used against them as evidence of guilt.

The case of Advocate Abu Sayeed Sagar, former Dhaka Bar Association president, epitomizes this tactic. During the 2023 Supreme Court Bar Association election, a minor scuffle became the pretext for charges against him. After securing six weeks of anticipatory bail, Sagar voluntarily surrendered on 5 October 2025 to renew it. Instead of a hearing, he was denied bail and jailed. Under the Yunus-led interim government, surrender no longer signifies compliance with the law—it becomes a trapdoor into imprisonment, illustrating how even lawful acts are punished.

Among the 75 documented incidents, 57 involved arrests leading directly to imprisonment. Lawyers have been detained at home, in offices, and even in courtrooms, signaling that no professional stature offers protection.

Each detention removes one voice and intimidates countless others. Bar associations hesitate to convene; young lawyers adopt silence as a survival tactic. The courtroom, once a sanctuary of justice, now functions as a stage for repression.

Behind these numbers are shattered lives. Prisoned lawyers endure overcrowded cells, denial of medical care, and restricted family visits. Many have lost their livelihoods; some have fled abroad to continue their work in exile. Families live in fear, and entire legal communities operate under siege, paralyzed by collective anxiety.

Since mid-2024, the Yunus administration, installed under the banner of “transition and reform”, has systematically dismantled civil liberties, silenced journalists, and targeted professionals aligned with the Awami League. A Nobel Peace laureate now presides over a government that governs through fear, betraying the principles for which he was once celebrated internationally.

The interim government’s influence extends deep into the judiciary. Judges are pressured; prosecutors are politicized. Bail hearings are postponed indefinitely, and lawyers are denied access to case files. This violates Bangladesh’s Constitution and Article 9 of the ICCPR, which prohibits arbitrary detention. Courts have shifted from being protectors of justice to instruments of political repression.

In today’s Bangladesh, detention is preventive, not punitive. Lawyers are imprisoned before dissent occurs, neutralizing critics and stifling independent advocacy. By incarcerating defenders of justice, the government effectively incarcerates the legal conscience of the nation.

Bangladesh is obliged to follow the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers (1990) and the ICCPR, both guaranteeing lawyers the right to perform their duties “without intimidation, hindrance, harassment, or improper interference.” The mass imprisonment of lawyers under the Yunus government is a direct violation of these commitments, making the administration complicit in systematic human-rights abuse.

The international community must act decisively. The UN and other human-rights bodies should conduct thorough fact-finding missions, while international legal associations monitor trials and document violations of due process. Governments should consider targeted measures, including visa bans and asset freezes against officials responsible for repression, and provide emergency visas or asylum for lawyers facing imminent arrest. Silence from Nobel committees, universities, or civil-society leaders can no longer be tolerated; neutrality in the face of such abuses is complicity.

The mass imprisonment of lawyers in Bangladesh represents a moral collapse of governance. By criminalizing advocacy itself, the Yunus-led interim government has weaponized justice as an instrument of fear.

Muhammad Yunus, once celebrated for empowering the powerless, now presides over a regime that suppresses those who defend them. The world must judge him not by accolades, but by the lives of those jailed for defending the law.

When defenders of justice are silenced, it is not only lawyers who are imprisoned—it is the conscience of Bangladesh itself.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

The aim was clear: to silence an insider whose integrity and criticism of corruption had become inconvenient for Doha’s ruling elite.

The Qatari leadership has long projected itself as a global patron of dialogue, human rights, and progressive diplomacy. From sponsoring mediation efforts in international conflicts to hosting global events such as the FIFA World Cup, Doha has cultivated the image of a small state punching above its weight on the international stage.

But behind the façade of polished diplomacy lies a harsher truth — one that the United Nations has now laid bare in its damning verdict on Qatar’s arbitrary detention and torture of French citizen Tayeb Benabderrahmane.

In one of its strongest condemnations to date, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared that Qatar had violated fundamental principles of international law by arresting, torturing, and sentencing Benabderrahmane in absentia.

The decision not only strips away Doha’s carefully curated image but also places an uncomfortable spotlight on France’s deafening silence in the face of its citizen’s ordeal.

A Political Purge Disguised as Justice

The story of Tayeb Benabderrahmane has all the hallmarks of a political purge. Once a trusted adviser to Qatar’s National Human Rights Committee, his sudden fall from grace in early 2020 was marked by clandestine arrest, torture, and legal blackmail.

On January 13 of that year, Qatari security forces seized him without warrant or justification, spiriting him away to a secret detention facility where he endured months of isolation, sleep deprivation, and coercion.

The UN report details chilling abuses — threats against his family, forced stress positions, and repeated interrogations intended to extract false confessions. For more than six months, he was denied access to a lawyer, to French consular protection, or even to basic interpretation services.

The aim was clear: to silence an insider whose integrity and criticism of corruption had become inconvenient for Doha’s ruling elite.

After his secret detention, Benabderrahmane was placed under strict house arrest in a Doha hotel, under constant surveillance, before being expelled to France in November 2020. But the nightmare did not end with his release. In May 2023, a Qatari court sentenced him to death in absentia — relying on forged documents and confessions extracted under torture.

The UN Working Group described these proceedings as “manifestly tainted by irregularities,” an unambiguous denunciation of Qatar’s disregard for fair trial standards. In essence, the ruling revealed the darker truth: Qatar’s judiciary functions less as an impartial institution and more as an arm of political expediency.

France’s Compromised Silence

If Qatar’s behavior exposes the brutality of unchecked power, France’s silence exposes the hypocrisy of selective human rights advocacy. Despite years of appeals from Benabderrahmane and his legal team, Paris has refused to act decisively or even issue strong public criticism of Doha.

The reason is painfully obvious. France has deep economic, strategic, and energy ties with Qatar — from defense contracts to investments in French infrastructure and football clubs. When billions of euros and strategic partnerships are at stake, the rights of a single citizen become an inconvenient casualty of realpolitik.

For a nation that often lectures others on democracy and human rights, France’s passivity in this case has undermined its credibility. How can Paris speak of protecting freedoms abroad while failing to shield one of its own citizens from torture and a death sentence abroad?

The UN’s demands leave no ambiguity: Qatar must compensate Benabderrahmane, restore his rights, investigate the violations, prosecute those responsible, and reform its judicial and security practices.

Failure to comply could escalate the case to the Human Rights Council, drawing deeper international scrutiny to a regime already under suspicion for labor abuses, migrant exploitation, and suppression of free speech.

A Double Scandal

Ultimately, the Benabderrahmane affair is not merely a Qatari scandal. It is a double scandal — the abuse of power by a state acting with impunity, and the complicity of a democratic nation whose silence betrays the very principles it claims to defend.

Qatar’s treatment of Benabderrahmane exposes the gap between its rhetoric and its reality, between its polished international branding and its ruthless domestic practices. But France’s refusal to stand up for its citizen is equally alarming, a reminder that even in Western democracies, human rights can be sacrificed at the altar of political convenience.

The UN’s ruling is not just a legal rebuke. It is a moral reckoning. Qatar has been unmasked as a state where arbitrary detention, torture, and political retribution remain tools of governance. France, meanwhile, faces uncomfortable questions about its willingness to defend its citizens when powerful allies are involved.

In the end, the Benabderrahmane case should serve as a wake-up call: to Doha, that its human rights abuses can no longer be hidden behind diplomatic theater; and to Paris, that silence in the face of injustice is complicity. The world is watching — and neither Qatar nor France can afford to ignore the stain this scandal has left on their reputations.