Report outlines police abuse in Bangladesh

Amnesty International called on Bangladesh Wednesday to honor its pledge to halt extrajudicial executions that have killed hundreds of people. The London-based group released a report saying hardly a week goes by without someone being shot by the country's special police force, the Rapid Action Battalion. Abbas Faiz, Amnesty International's Bangladesh researcher, said RAB has been implicated in the deaths of at least 700 people since it was created in 2004. "It is appalling that virtually all alleged instances of illegal RAB killings have gone unchallenged or unpunished," Faiz said. "There can be no justice if the force is the chief investigator of its own wrongdoings." Bangladeshi police and RAB continue to receive a wide range of military and police equipment from overseas, the report said. Countries supplying the arms include Austria, Belgium, China, Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Turkey and the United States. Amnesty International has asked those countries to halt the sale of arms RAB can use to commit extrajudicial executions and other human rights violations.