The United Nations is calling for a full investigation into evidence of corruption and illegality involving the Bangladesh Army, which was revealed in a study released by Al Jazeera on Monday.
The corruption involves the Chief of Staff of the Bangladeshi Army, General Aziz Ahmed, who is due to meet with senior DA officials in New York next week.
In All the Prime Minister’s Men, The Al Jazeera Investigation Unit revealed that the Bangladeshi military purchased solemn and highly brutal mobile surveillance equipment from Israel, which Bangladesh military leaders said was “for one of the Army Supporters who was to be deployed in UN peacekeeping mission “.
A spokesman for the UN said this was not the case and that the peacekeepers were not operating “electronic equipment of the type described in the Al Jazeera statement”.
“Such equipment has not been used by Bangladeshi supporters in United Nations detention operations,” a DA spokesman told Al Jazeera.
“We are aware of the statement by Al Jazeera Investigations regarding corruption allegations against senior officials in Bangladesh and the press release issued by the Ministry of Defense of Bangladesh. Allegation of corruption is an important issue that should be investigated by the relevant authorities.
Bangladesh is the largest total donor of uniformed personnel to DA peacekeeping missions, with more than 6,800 currently deployed in peacekeeping operations worldwide.
IMSI receivers
The surveillance equipment is called “international mobile identity catcher”, or IMSI-catcher. It is a device that simulates cell towers to integrate cell devices into locations and data that is then captured by the device.
It can be used to track hundreds of show attendees at the same time, among other things.
The Bangladeshi army said the equipment was made in Hungary and not in Israel, something the majority Muslim country does not recognize.
Al Jazeera won the contract for the purchase, which was deliberately hiding that the manufacturer, PicSix, is an Israeli company. PicSix was founded by former Israeli intelligence agents and sent two experts to Hungary to train officers from the Director General of Intelligence Forces (DGFI), Bangladesh’s military intelligence service, on how the equipment should operate.
The contract, dated June 2018, was signed by the Directorate General of Defense, the body responsible for purchasing Bangladesh’s arms supply. The manufacturer was said to be PicSix Hungary, an entity that does not exist according to Hungarian company films.
The contract lists the non-existent PicSix Ltd, Hungary as the manufacturer [Al Jazeera]
Al Jazeera found secret recordings of a middle man, James Moloney, admitting that the IMSI catcher was made from Israel. Moloney, an Irish national, owns a company called Sovereign Systems, which is based in Singapore, although based in Bangkok.
Moloney is quoted as saying that Sovereign Systems was a counterpart for the Picsix business in Asia. He also acknowledged that the monitoring technology is from Israel, so we will not advertise that technology. We are very careful about our public image.
“I could never say that the Bangladesh army was my buyer. We can’t do that, ”he said.
He described the technology as “very aggressive and tedious.” You do not want the public to know that you are using that equipment. “
Human rights violations
According to Eliot Bendinelli of Privacy International, a UK-based privacy watchdog, authorities can use it to gather information about participants in exhibitions.
“You’re looking at everyone in the area so you can keep exploring and have more people being surveyed at the same time,” Bendinelli said.
Bendinelli said, “If you know what people are saying, where they are going to meet, what they are planning to do, you can know a lot of things. And then you have the power to act. “
Israeli human rights lawyer Eitay Mack told Al Jazeera that the Israeli government will not review end-user human rights records. “For a country like Bangladesh, if they buy this equipment from the US or the European Union, they have a discount on you when you use it for human rights violations and they could cancel the agreement,” he said.
“With Israel, it’s not like that, they’re not asking questions. They’re not worried,” Mack said.
The knowledge that Bangladesh could use Israel-made spyware to monitor opposition groups will spark further discontent in a country accused of multiple human rights violations.
According to Amnesty International, the government is involved in “unlawful killings, evictions and irregular arrests, and torture”.
General Aziz Ahmed and his runaway brother Haris attend Aziz’s son Dhaka’s 2019 wedding. [Al Jazeera]All the Prime Minister’s men
Months of speculation have surfaced that the army commander, General Aziz Ahmed, is backing two of his brothers to escape a prison sentence for murder, and that he ordered officers to help with creating a false identity for a man who fled to Europe.
Aziz moved his runaway brother, Haris Ahmed, to Hungary where he works under a false identity, buying companies and property using bribes from military contracts and running ripping racks with Bangladeshi security forces. A second brother fled into hiding in Malaysia.
General Ahmed is currently on a diplomatic trip to the United States where he will meet with UN officials to discuss Bangladesh’s routine deployment of more than 6,000 troops for the UN in countries such as Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Burundi. Aziz is expected to meet with the under-secretary-general for peacekeeping and other senior UN officials involved in peacekeeping work.
The call for an investigation by the DA will be a severe blow to Bangladesh’s military.
The UN, which has a military staff known as the Blue Helmets, spends nearly $ 7bn a year on its peacekeeping missions.
The use of Bangladesh generates a lot of money for the Bangladeshi army and is valuable as a sign of their international standing as a professional military force.
The concern expressed by the UN will put the Bangladesh Ministry of Defense under great pressure to defend General Aziz who has not yet commented on the investigation. The Bangladeshi military public relations office said the investigation was “controversial and malicious”.