Former army officer Major General (retd) Ziaul Ahsan would shoot detainees in the head, slit open their stomachs and tie sacks of cement to their bodies before dumping them in the Baleshwar River, a witness testified before the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) on Wednesday.

Sixty-year-old boatman Abbas Mallik recounted the horrifying details before ICT-1, headed by Justice Md Mohitul Enam Chowdhury.

Abbas, the 10th witness in the case against Ziaul, broke down in tears while testifying before the tribunal.

Prosecutors Mizanul Islam and Tasmirul Islam conducted the hearing for the prosecution. Prosecutors Abdus Sobhan Tarafdar, Shyikh Mahdi and Abdus Sattar Palowan, among others, were also present.

Recalling the dark chapter of 2010 and 2011, when the alleged incidents took place on his and his younger brother Alkas Mallik’s trawlers, Abbas said that whenever RAB personnel came to the area, two men in plain clothes would arrive at the local market in the afternoon and instruct shopkeepers to close their businesses and switch off their lights after evening.

Around 11pm to midnight, four or five RAB microbuses would arrive and stop in front of an ice mill. Detainees, with their eyes and hands bound, would be taken out of the vehicles and put aboard their boats. The detainees had been brought from Dhaka, he said.

RAB personnel would also bring ropes, sacks of cement and hogla mats onto the boats, Abbas testified.

He further said that once the trawler reached deep waters, Ziaul would personally shoot the detainees once or several times in the head, ear or chest, killing them.

After the shootings, the victims’ stomachs would be slit open and their intestines removed. If someone was shot in the head, their brains would spill out, he said, adding that the boat would become covered in blood.

The bodies would then be tied to sacks of cement by their legs and thrown into the Baleshwar River, according to the witness.

After carrying out the killings in the river, the trawler would take the remaining detainees deep into the Sundarbans. There, the others would allegedly be shot and the incidents staged as so-called “gunfights” or “crossfire” killings.

Journalists would be called to the scene, and the bodies would later be handed over to different police stations, Abbas testified.

Describing what happened to the boatmen after the operations, Abbas said their job was to wash and clean the blood-covered boats.

“While washing the boat in the middle of the river, seeing the intestines that had come out of the slit stomachs along with the blood would send shivers down our spines,” he testified.

After everything was over, Major Sabbir would tell them, “Zia Sir is calling you.” Ziaul would then give some of them 2,000 taka and others 5,000 taka in envelopes, Abbas said.

At one point in his testimony, Abbas’s voice reflected the pain of losing his younger brother Alkas Mallik. He said his brother also paid the price for protesting against RAB’s alleged activities and discussing them in the local market.

He said that one day in mid-2011, Alkas went to Bottola Manik Khali after receiving a call from RAB to meet Ziaul. He never returned.

Abbas said he searched for his brother at RAB offices in Patuakhali, Barishal, Khulna and Dhaka but found no trace of him. When he went to a police station to file a general diary, police refused to include the names of Ziaul Ahsan and RAB in the complaint.

Pointing towards Ziaul Ahsan, who was standing in the courtroom dock, Abbas said, “My brother may also have been killed like those detainees and thrown into the river. I saw Zia Sir with my own eyes at that time. He is present before the tribunal today. I want justice for my brother and for all the enforced disappearances and killings.”

After Abbas completed his testimony, Ziaul Ahsan’s lawyers Syed Mizanur Rahman and Shahidur Rahman cross-examined him.

Ziaul Ahsan, former Director General of the National Telecommunications Monitoring Centre (NTMC) and former senior RAB official, is currently in jail after being accused in several cases involving crimes against humanity.