A man jailed for eight years by former Bangladeshi ruler Sheikh Hasina’s regime has said Dhaka police raided his family home after British journalists asked her niece, UK City minister Tulip Siddiq, about his plight.
Mir Ahmad bin Quasem told the Financial Times that security personnel told his wife to “remain low” and put a stop to media coverage hours before Channel 4 News broadcast footage of its journalists questioning Siddiq.
“Tulip being confronted on this issue clearly struck a chord somewhere within the Sheikh dynasty,” said Quasem, who was held in a secret Bangladeshi jail without trial between 2016 and 2024. “So I’m sure that’s what made this knee-jerk reaction from the administration.”
Journalists from Channel 4 News approached Siddiq in London on the morning of Saturday 25 November 2017, suggesting that “with one phone call you could make a huge difference” to Quasem, who has Bangladeshi nationality.
Footage of the confrontation — in which Siddiq warned the journalists against implying she was a Bangladeshi politician, saying “be very careful what you’re saying, I’m a British MP” — was broadcast three days later on the evening of November 28.
Hours before it aired, security personnel, including members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), a unit of the Bangladesh police widely accused of human rights abuses, surrounded the family’s home, according to Quasem.
Almost a dozen armed men entered the house, said Quasem, demanding the details of his wife’s overseas contacts. “It was as if they were hunting a terrorist,” he added.
Quasem was first detained in 2016 while serving on the legal team of his father, an Islamist party leader in Bangladesh. His release on August 6 last year came less than 24 hours after Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League government were ousted from power.
Trained as a lawyer in Britain, he was one of hundreds held in the regime’s notorious “House of Mirrors” prison, known by that name because detainees report seeing nobody else for years. Describing his detention as “worse than death”, Quasem said he was handcuffed and deprived of sunlight.
Michael Polok, Quasem’s UK-based lawyer, said he believed the raid was an attempt to push Quasem’s family to press Channel 4 News not to broadcast the footage.
“Here you have a member of parliament being properly asked about something and this causes threats from a security body that is known to disappear and torture and kill people,” Polok said.
The FT revealed last week that Siddiq owns a property in London that she acquired without payment from a developer linked to the Awami League.
The Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate has also lived in properties tied to figures in the party, including her current home in East Finchley.
Siddiq on Monday referred herself to the government’s adviser on ministerial standards over her property holdings, saying she had “done nothing wrong”.
Bangladesh’s International Criminal Tribunal on Monday issued arrest warrants for Sheikh Hasina and 11 of her top officials for their alleged role in enforced disappearances.
Siddiq’s aunt was directly involved in the forced disappearance of thousands of people, according to a preliminary report published last month by a new inquiry commission set up by Bangladesh’s transitional government.
Siddiq, who has responsibility for fighting illicit finance in the UK, was named in a probe last month by the Anti-Corruption Commission in Bangladesh.
The investigation came after a political rival of Sheikh Hasina accused her relatives, including Siddiq, of taking a cut from a Russia-backed nuclear power project.
Sheikh Hasina’s family has also been accused of siphoning funds from Bangladesh’s banking systems. They have denied these claims.
Sajeeb Wazed, Sheikh Hasina’s son and adviser, told Reuters last month: “It is not possible to siphon off billions from a $10bn project [the nuclear deal]. We also don’t have any offshore accounts. I have been living in the US for 30 years, my aunt and cousins in the UK for a similar amount of time. We obviously have accounts here, but none of us have ever seen that kind of money.”
The RAB, which was put under sanctions by the US in 2021 for its role in extrajudicial killings and disappearances, came under new leadership after the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government. A new law is being drafted to regulate its operations.
Quasem, who said his time in jail had left him “physically frail and psychologically traumatised”, called for UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to “seriously reconsider whether she [Siddiq] is fit for the responsibility that is bestowed upon her”.
Siddiq apologised after the transmission of the Channel 4 News report about her conduct towards one of the programme’s journalists.
The FT contacted Siddiq and the Labour party for comment. Siddiq did not respond to the request and Labour declined to comment.
An ally of Siddiq said Quasem was neither a constituent of hers nor a British citizen but that she had written to the Foreign Office in December 2017 to raise his case after she was asked to do so by constituents, in line with the “correct protocol” for a constituency MP.