1,000 Murderers Hunted in Bangladesh

The aftermath of the failed paramilitary rebellion in Bangladesh last week is ugly, very ugly. It shows the poor, overcrowded nation to be much less stable than widely believed. The group, Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), is not merely a group that tried to take over the government, it was - apparently - a planned slaughter. BDR was unhappy about wages and other conditions. More than 1,000 border guards were charged Sunday with murder and arson in a uprising that left at least 148 people dead or missing, most of them army officers whose bodies were hurriedly discarded by the mutineers. The details of what the prime minister called "a planned massacre" emerged after the government withdrew its promise of amnesty and sought to repair its increasingly tense relations with the military. More from AP/Yahoo! News... The mutiny caught many Bangladeshis by surprise. Ashik Uzzaman is a software engineer in Bangladesh, and wrote this on his blog: Just when I was thinking we (Bangladeshis) are moving forward with the newly elected Govt bringing hopes for a better democracy, I was shocked with this week's BDR Mutinee and massacre killings of Bangladesh Army's high officials in Pilkhana right in the enter of the capital city Dhaka. This is so sad that it can't be described in written words. ABC Australia reports that any captured mutineers will be executed. Troops have spent the weekend recovering bodies from shallow graves at the headquarters of the Bangladesh Rifles and the Government is calling on the United Nations and Scotland Yard to assist in the investigation and the identification of bodies. The two-day mutiny was sparked by a dispute over pay and conditions and began last Wednesday when members of the Bangladesh Rifles opened fire on their own officers. More from www.abc.net.au... It should be noted that the prime minister of Bangladesh is also asking for assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (United States). RELATED: Pakistan Connection to Bangladesh Mutiny? CIA - The World Factbook - Bangladesh New Bangladesh Graves Discovered - BBC Blog posts about Bangladesh Bangladesh PM seeks FBI help to probe mutiny Chicago News Bench RSS Feed Cool Stuff...