State funeral for mutiny dead

Published on Monday 2 March 2009 21:20

TENS of thousands of Bangladeshis attended a state funeral yesterday for dozens of army officers killed in a mutiny last week.

The rebellion by paramilitary troops at their Dhaka headquarters was put down within two days, but the brazen attacks highlighted the security concerns confronting the two-month-old government.

The mutiny by Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) border guards, over pay and the command structure, spread to about a dozen smaller towns across Bangladesh.

At least 80 people, most of them army officers, were killed in the mutiny.

At a mass funeral in the capital on yesterday, national and army flags were draped over the coffins. Buglers played the Last Post, and relatives wept.

Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister, has ordered a special tribunal tries the killers, and has sought help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Scotland Yard.

The military at the weekend pledged its loyalty to Ms Hasina, who came to office two months ago after winning a parliamentary election that brought to an end two years of emergency rule by an army-backed interim government.

But Ms Hasina must do more to end discontent in the rank and file of the army to secure the democracy, a government official said.

"Clearly it (the mutiny] was a pre-planned incident. But how it happened in an area where access of people is restricted has to be uncovered," said Arefin Siddique, vice-chancellor of Dhaka University.

Sixty-five bodies of officers have been recovered from mass graves, sewers, drains and canals within the BDR complex, but at least 70 officers are still missing, believed dead. The search for them is going on.

Police said they had identified up to 1,000 BDR members as suspects, and some could be charged with murder.