{"id":9127,"date":"2021-02-05T09:40:35","date_gmt":"2021-02-05T09:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/?p=9127"},"modified":"2021-02-05T09:40:35","modified_gmt":"2021-02-05T09:40:35","slug":"all-the-pms-men-bangla-army-chiefs-corruption-purchase-of-israeli-equip-uno-for-full-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/all-the-pms-men-bangla-army-chiefs-corruption-purchase-of-israeli-equip-uno-for-full-investigation\/","title":{"rendered":"All the PM’s Men-Bangla Army Chief’s Corruption? Purchase of Israeli Equip-UNO for Full Investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Al-Jazeera Investigation Unit<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

The United Nations is calling for a full investigation into evidence of corruption and illegality involving the Bangladesh army, which was exposed during an investigation released by Al Jazeera on Monday.<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

The corruption involves Bangladesh\u2019s Chief of Army Staff, General Aziz Ahmed, who is due to meet senior UN officials in New York next week.<\/h3>\n

In\u00a0All the Prime Minister\u2019s Men<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0Al Jazeera\u2019s Investigative Unit revealed that Bangladesh\u2019s military purchased sophisticated and highly intrusive mobile phone surveillance equipment from Israel, which Bangladesh military commanders\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0was \u201cfor one of the Army Contingents due to be deployed in the UN Peacekeeping Mission\u201d.<\/h3>\n

A spokesperson for the UN said that this was not the case and that its peacekeepers do not operate \u201celectronic equipment of the nature described in the Al Jazeera reporting\u201d.<\/h3>\n

\u201cSuch equipment has not been deployed with Bangladeshi contingents in United Nations peacekeeping operations,\u201d the UN spokesperson told Al Jazeera.<\/h3>\n

\u201cWe are aware of the reporting by Al Jazeera Investigations concerning allegations of corruption against senior officials in Bangladesh and the press release issued by the Ministry of Defence of Bangladesh. The allegation of corruption is a serious matter that should be investigated by the relevant authorities.<\/h3>\n

Bangladesh is the largest overall contributor of uniformed personnel to UN Peacekeeping missions, with more than 6,800 presently deployed in peacekeeping operations around the world.\"General<\/h3>\n

IMSI-catchers<\/h3>\n

The surveillance equipment is called an \u201cinternational mobile subscriber identity-catcher\u201d, or IMSI-catcher. It is a tool that emulates cell towers to trick cellular devices into providing locations and data that is then captured by the device.<\/h3>\n

It can be used to track hundreds of attendees of demonstrations simultaneously, among other things.<\/h3>\n

The Bangladesh army\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0that the equipment was made in Hungary and not Israel, which the Muslim-majority country does not recognise.<\/h3>\n

Al Jazeera obtained\u00a0the contract<\/a>\u00a0for the purchase, which deliberately concealed the fact that the manufacturer, PicSix, is an Israeli company. PicSix was set up by former Israeli intelligence agents and sent two experts to Hungary to train officers from the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), Bangladesh\u2019 military intelligence service, on how to operate the equipment.<\/h3>\n

The contract, dated June 2018, was signed by the Directorate General Defense Purchase, the body charged with buying Bangladesh\u2019s military supplies. The manufacturer was said to be PicSix Hungary, an entity that does not exist according to Hungarian company filings.<\/h3>\n

Al Jazeera obtained covert recordings of a middleman, James Moloney, admitting the IMSI-catcher was Israeli made. Moloney, an Irish national, owns a company called Sovereign Systems, which is registered in Singapore, though he, himself is based in Bangkok.<\/h3>\n

Moloney is recorded saying that Sovereign Systems was a front for Picsix\u2019s business in Asia. He also admitted that the surveillance technology is \u201cfrom Israel, so we don\u2019t advertise that technology. We are very careful about our public profile.<\/h3>\n

\u201cI could never say the Bangladesh army is my customer. We cannot do that,\u201d he added.<\/h3>\n

He described the technology as \u201cvery aggressive and intrusive. You don\u2019t want the public to know that you\u2019re using that equipment.\u201d<\/h3>\n

Human rights violations<\/h3>\n

According to Eliot Bendinelli from Privacy International, a UK-based privacy watchdog, authorities can use it to collect information on people taking part in demonstrations.<\/h3>\n

\u201cYou are looking at everybody who is in the area and so you can keep investigating and having more people under surveillance at the same time,\u201d Bendinelli said.<\/h3>\n

Bendinelli added, \u201cIf you know what people are saying, where they are going to meet up, what they are planning to do, you can know a lot of things. And then you have the power to act.\u201d<\/h3>\n

Eitay Mack, an Israeli human rights lawyer, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli government does not scrutinise the human rights records of end-users. \u201cFor a country like Bangladesh, if they buy this equipment from the US or European Union, they have leverage on you when you use it for human rights violations and they might cancel the agreement,\u201d he said.<\/h3>\n

\u201cWith Israel, it\u2019s not like that, they don\u2019t ask questions. They don\u2019t care,\u201d Mack said.<\/h3>\n

The knowledge that Israeli-made spyware could be used by Bangladesh to monitor opposition groups will spark further unease in a nation accused of multiple human rights violations.<\/h3>\n

According to Amnesty International, the government is involved in \u201cunlawful killings and disappearances, arbitrary arrest and detention, and torture\u201d.<\/h3>\n

All the Prime Minister\u2019s Men<\/h3>\n

Months of undercover reporting\u00a0revealed<\/a>\u00a0that the head of the army, General Aziz Ahmed, is aiding two of his brothers to escape prison sentences for murder, and that he ordered officers to help create a false identity for one who fled to Europe.<\/h3>\n

Aziz moved his fugitive brother, Haris Ahmed, to Hungary where he operates under the false identity, buying companies and property using kickbacks from military contracts and running extortion rackets with Bangladesh security forces. A second fugitive brother was in hiding in Malaysia.<\/h3>\n

General Ahmed is currently on a diplomatic visit to the United States where will meet UN officials to discuss Bangladesh\u2019s current deployment of more than 6,000 troops for the UN in countries like Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia and Burundi. Aziz is due to meet the under-secretary-general for peace operations and other senior UN officials involved in peacekeeping operations.<\/h3>\n

The call for an inquiry by the UN will be a serious blow for the Bangladesh military.<\/h3>\n

The UN, whose military personnel are known as the Blue Helmets, spends nearly $7bn annually on its peacekeeping missions.<\/h3>\n

Bangladesh\u2019s deployment generates significant funds for the Bangladeshi army and is prized as a mark of their international standing as a professional military force.<\/h3>\n

The concern expressed by the UN will put the Bangladesh Ministry of Defence under mounting pressure to defend General Aziz who has so far not commented himself on the investigation. The Bangladesh army public relations office described the investigation as \u201cconcocted and ill-intended\u201d.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Al-Jazeera Investigation Unit The United Nations is calling for a full investigation into evidence of corruption and illegality involving the Bangladesh army, which was exposed during an investigation released by Al Jazeera on Monday. The corruption involves Bangladesh\u2019s Chief of Army Staff, General Aziz Ahmed, who is due to meet senior UN officials in New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,46],"tags":[932,120,661,285,334],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9127"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9127"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9129,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9127\/revisions\/9129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}