Sahara gets guns down, hostages out
Dhaka, Feb 26 (bdnews24.com) A long day's drama was ending early Thursday morning as BDR mutineers began giving up their guns and hostages after a bold move by Bangladesh's first woman home minister to drive straight into the rebels' den.
"I have assured them no army units will enter (the BDR headquarters)," Sahara Khatun told reporters including bdnews24.com senior correspondents Sumon Mahbub and Liton Haider at 4:20am after she came out of the compound.
The minister did not say anything about the rumours and reports on the casualty figures. Her companion, state minister for law Quamrul Islam, refused to speculate on the number of the dead.
"I have neither seen any dead nor any injured," the state minister told Sumon Mahbub at 4:50am when asked about the dead.
The home minister freed at least 15 families out of captivity, who were herded into four vehicles including the one carrying her.
Sahara Khatun watched as the BDR mutineers began handing in their guns. The minister with no security also led officers' families out of their homes in the residential blocks in the sprawling complex in downtown Dhaka.
"I told them I am like your mother. You can trust me," the minister quoted herself as saying to hundreds of rebels she met in a field outside the Darbar Hall where she heard their grievances.
"I was taken to the armoury. They began laying down their arms before me," she said. "They were continuing as I left."
"I told them: 'I am your minister. I promise you ... you listen to me so that I can go and tell the prime minister that these boys have obliged you.'
"They were insisting on not allowing the army to get inside. They were saying the army must not come. I told them, I assure you they won't."
The minister, accompanied by the state minister for law and police chief Noor Mohammad, had gone inside, driven in a privately-owned bullet-proof SUV of the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina. A fourth person, described by correspondents as an aide to Sahara Khatun, was also in the vehicle.
On her return, two families were in the minister's car. A family of fouran elderly couple, an adult man and a childwere bundled into the back of the SUV while a woman and a 6-year-old boy with his back-pack school bag were seated next to the minister.
Two sedan cars and a big bus carried the other families.
"My father is still inside the Darbar Hall. Please save my father," said Syed Imamuzzaman, teenage son of Lt Col Syed Quamruzzaman, believed trapped inside.
The boy was in one of the two cars. A woman in another pleaded to "do something about the many other hostages".
"Get them out ... accept all their demands," she said.
At least two men approached the home minister to find out about their brothersboth army officers among the Darbar Hall victims.
News trickles out
The news of surrender began trickling out more than two hours after the home minister led an unarmed team of four into a battle-scarred territory occupied by the heavily-armed BDR rebels.
A top police official told bdnews24.com at around 2:30am that a section of the rebels had started surrendering their weapons. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.
A member of the BTV crew called in by the BDR men said at 3:15am that he had seen guns being put down.
"They surrendered their weapons in presence of the home minister," said Rafiqul Islam, a BTV cameraman, speaking to bdnews24.com correspondent Golam Mortuza by phone.
"Sahara Khatun then went to the homes of BDR officers and got their families out," the BTV man said after coming out the compound that had plunged into complete chaos since the 9:30 Darbar called by the BDR chief, now believed killed by his own troops.
There was no confirmation whether major general Shakil Ahmed was alive after reports all day of his death.
bdnews24.com correspondent Sumon Mahbub, standing outside the main entrance to the headquarters, saw a "requisitioned" police bus enter the compound at 3:26am.
The bus was greeted with gunfirefirst with one single shot and then a burst of fireostensibly because it was being followed by three RAB vehicles.
The shots diverted the three RAB microbuses with tinted windows, which were about to enter the compound, towards Rifles Square, the BDR-owned shopping centre right next to the main entrance.
Mahbub said he believed the bus would be used to ferry the hostages out.
Army steps back
Army troops had earlier pulled back from their positions around the BDR headquarters as the home minister, Sahara Khatun, drove into the besieged compound half an hour past midnight.
Withdrawal of army units emerged as the key demand from the rebels after the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, announced general amnesty during a two-hour meeting with a team of 14 BDR men.
The 14, flanked by government negotiators state minister Jahangir Kabir Nanak MP and whip Mirza Azam MP, were driven straight to the prime minister's official residence at Hare Road from the blood-stained BDR compound.
They arrived at 3.40pm and spent more than two hours with the prime minister. They were also joined, among others, by army chief Gen Moeen U Ahmed.
The prime minister also told the 14 that she would meet their demandsno army in BDR command and better payin phases.
On return to their headquarters, the 14, however, failed to get the message across to their fellow mutineers, who insisted on sending the army convoys back to their barracks.
The home minister, at this stage, led a government team in nearly three hours of talks with the paramilitary mutineers at a hotel nearby.
What transpired in the Ambala Inn talks could not be known, but the minister drove into the hive of the armed rebels, believed to be in their hundreds, for further negotiations.
As the minister entered the BDR premises, the army convoys pulled back by hundreds of metres, bdnews24.com correspondents on the spot said.
Two ambulances were seen waiting near the main entrance when the SUV carrying the ministers went in.
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