By R Hassan, TON Bangladesh

Despite US sanctions against the Rapid Action Battalion(RAB) members went to Britain to receive mass surveillance training. The Bangladeshi RAB has been accused of extrajudicial killings, torture and forced. Several members of a Bangladesh anti-crime unit accused of human rights abuses travelled to the United Kingdom in 2022 to receive security training, Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) reports.

Members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), a law enforcement unit dubbed a “death squad” by human rights organizations, went to the UK in May and October 2022 for a cybersecurity course and training on the use of mass surveillance equipment. The instruction by British law enforcement experts happened despite the RAB being sanctioned by the United States for its alleged involvement in human rights abuses such as extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances.

Previously, the US and UK received the same evidence regarding the Rapid Action Battalion’s alleged involvement in forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, but only the US decided to sanction the RAB. As the United Kingdom was also set to impose sanctions on Bangladesh’s anti-terrorism Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in 2021 but held back for reasons that remain unexplained.

A lot of times, when the US government considers sanctioning someone or an entity like this, they may reach out to the UK, or Canada and the European Union to see if there’s interest in taking joint action together. However, the UK decided at the last minute to not implement sanctions that were to coincide with the restrictions by its closest ally. Al Jazeera was able to confirm with several sources who said they heard accounts of the plan being pulled at the eleventh hour.

The US implemented sanctions against the RAB and seven high-ranking current and former members on December 10, 2021, for alleged human rights violations such as torture and forced disappearances. The RAB has been likened to a “death squad” by several human rights organizations. It is unclear why the UK government decided not to sanction the RAB. If it had, the 2022 training trips would likely have not happened, but the sanctions were inexplicably not implemented by the UK despite the US doing so.

RAB is approaching to US partner countries to get the kind of training and tools and resources that they need to be a more ‘effective’ force back at home in Bangladesh.  According to supervising staff lawyer for accountability at human rights NGO Human Rights that they’re going to further engage in repression in Bangladesh.

In May this year, at least five Bangladeshi officers travelled to the UK to receive a Cyber Incident Response Management Foundation Training Course and a Cyber Security Practitioner Training Course from Irish company IT Governance, according to the documents. The training took place over several days and cost more than 15,000 euros ($15,800) in total, an invoice sent to RAB shows.

The expectation was that the UK and US, being strong allies, that they would be collaborating with each other by announcing back-to-back sanctions. The US did that on the 10th of December, the UK didn’t. The US used that evidence to sanction the RAB as an organization and seven current and former high-ranking officials from the unit under the Global Magnitsky Act, citing evidence of alleged involvement in at least 600 forced disappearances since 2009 and more than 600 extrajudicial killings since 2018.

The Bangladesh government has denied those accusations, saying the deaths were the result of so-called “crossfires” not summary executions with the “criminal” being killed when he got caught in the crossfire between his gang and the RAB.

Under the Global Human Rights Accountability Act, which was created to penalize human rights abusers by freezing their assets, American companies and individuals are prohibited from doing business with those sanctioned. According to supervising staff lawyer for accountability with human rights organization Human Rights First, the fact that the British government did not go through with the sanctions was “surprising and disappointing”.