 "House of Mirrors: The chilling truth behind Bangladesh's vanished prisoners")
When they came for him right before dawn, former lawyer Mir Ahmad Quasem Arman thought it was his final moment. Eight years in a dark underground prison had taught him that such raids rarely end well. But this time, instead of an execution, something unexpected happened. The guards removed his blindfold, tied his wrists with cloth, and bundled him into a van for a long, silent drive through the dark. He was bracing for the worst.
To his shock, instead of the river or a ditch, Arman was dumped in an empty field on the outskirts of Dhaka. The sun had just started to rise, but as he looked around, he realised it wasn’t just his freedom that was new — his country had changed beyond recognition, reported The New York Times.
Sheikh Hasina, former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, had been forced to flee the country after protesters stormed her home in August. Her 15-year reign of iron-fisted control had come to an end, and with it, the doors to one of Bangladesh’s most notorious secret prisons were flung open.
Arman, along with two other political prisoners, had been set free after years of brutal captivity in the shadowy detention centre known only by its chilling code name: The House of Mirrors.
For years, Bangladesh had been haunted by disappearances — activists, journalists, and opposition figures reportedly vanished without a trace. Many were never seen again. But with Hasina’s exit, the country is now facing a grim reckoning with its recent past, as survivors like Arman emerge from the darkness to tell their stories.
Escape from the darkness
Arman’s story is one of survival in the face of hopeless despair. A once-chubby lawyer, he was picked up in 2016, seemingly for the sins of his father, who was a prominent Islamist leader. When Arman returned, his body was gaunt, his beard thin and wispy, and his hair had all but disappeared. What remained was the one thing that kept him sane during his years of isolation — his hope of being reunited with his wife and two daughters.
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“I prayed to God every day. If I couldn’t be with my family in this world, I asked Him to at least reunite us in heaven,” Arman was quoted as saying by The New York Times.
What Arman did not know during those eight torturous years was that his captivity was part of a much larger and more sinister programme. Sheikh Hasina, once a beacon of democracy, had allegedly descended into a regime of fear, targeting anyone who dared to challenge her rule. Hundreds were abducted by her security forces, often for something as simple as attending an opposition rally or posting a critical message on social media. Some were killed; others were locked away in the ‘House of Mirrors’, forgotten by the world.
House of Mirrors: A prison of the mind
For those who survived, the House of Mirrors was a place of psychological torment. Arman’s fellow detainee, retired army general Abdullahil Amaan Azmi, recalled the meticulous cruelty of the prison. In the eight years he was held captive, Azmi estimated he was blindfolded and handcuffed 41,000 times. The facility, buried deep within a military base, was a well-oiled machine designed to push its prisoners to the brink of insanity.
“I didn’t see the sky, the sun, the trees, the Moon,” Azmi told The New York Times.
For months, he would search for even a sliver of light through the ventilation holes in his cell, only to have them sealed when the guards realised what he was doing.
The goal was not to kill the prisoners but to break them. Haircuts were scheduled every few months. Medical check-ups were frequent to ensure the detainees stayed alive. But every day, their minds were eroded by the constant fear that they could be executed at any moment.
Azmi, a decorated army officer, was targeted because of his father’s high-ranking position in an Islamist party that opposed PM Hasina. But despite the unimaginable conditions, it was the uncertainty that hurt the most. “Please don’t let animals eat my dead body,” Azmi prayed. “Let them send it to my family.”
A nation’s reckoning
Sheikh Hasina’s regime once appeared unshakeable. Under her leadership, Bangladesh’s economy flourished, and the country gained international praise for its progress in reducing poverty. But, lurking beneath the surface was a dark reality. Hasina employed elite forces like the Rapid Action Battalion, originally trained by the United States and Britain to combat terrorism, and repurposed them into instruments of terror. Human Rights Watch described them as her “in-house death squad”.
From 2009 to 2023, more than 700 people reportedly disappeared, with many more cases going unreported due to the government’s chokehold on the media and civil society. Some were found dead, others were released after years of silence, and about 150 are still missing.
Sheikh Hasina’s escape has cracked open a window into the regime’s darkest secrets. The House of Mirrors is now at the centre of a growing demand for justice, as families of the disappeared, emboldened by the Prime Minister’s fall, have taken to the streets. Their question: ‘Where are our loved ones?’
For these families, the fight for answers has been long and painful. “It’s like he never existed,” said Tasnim Shipraa, whose uncle, Belal Hossain, disappeared in 2013. “All we want is the truth.”
Yunus confronts past atrocities
In the weeks following Hasina’s departure, the country’s only Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who now leads Bangladesh’s interim government, took swift steps to address the atrocities of the past. He signed an international treaty on enforced disappearances and formed a committee to investigate crimes committed under Hasina’s rule.
A special court has even issued an arrest warrant for the former Prime Minister, who remains in exile. Yet, the road to justice is far from smooth. As Yunus told the survivors and families, “Keep your hopes up, but I can’t say what the result will be.”
For Arman and Azmi — another political prisoner freed in August — the scars of their captivity will never heal entirely. But their release has ignited a spark of hope among the hundreds of families still waiting for news. Outside the military bases and government buildings, they chant, “The House of Mirrors, the House of Mirrors,” with one unified demand: “Shatter it! Shatter it!”
The question now is whether Bangladesh can seize this moment of reckoning to break free from its cycle of political violence. The fate of those still lost in the House of Mirrors depends on it.