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Border Guards Charged In Mutiny

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The Associated Press

Published: March 2, 2009

DHAKA - More than 1,000 border guards were charged Sunday with murder and arson in an 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.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina met with military officials furious that she offered amnesty to the mutinous border guards to persuade them to surrender. The officers argued that lives could have been saved if Hasina had ordered an army assault on the guards' compound.

Hasina told parliament she had asked for help from the FBI to investigate.

The government announced that those directly responsible would not fall under the amnesty.

Firefighters have recovered 77 bodies, but at least 71 officers were still unaccounted for in the uprising at the Bangladesh Rifles border force headquarters in the capital, Dhaka. Teams searched for bodies buried in the compound or dumped in nearby sewers. Most of the missing were presumed dead, said Sheikh Mohammad Shajalal, a firefighter overseeing the search.

The insurrection has raised questions about the stability of Hasina's two-month-old government in the impoverished South Asian country, which has seen nearly two dozen successful and failed military coups in its 38-year history.

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