Bangladesh will hold court martials for paramilitary border guards involved in a mutiny last month in which more than 80 people, mostly senior commanders, were killed, the country's law minister said on Thursday. Nearly 200 members of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) have been detained for the revolt over wages that began on Feb. 25 at the headquarters of the paramilitary force in Dhaka and then spread to a dozen other towns. “We have decided to try the mutineers under court martial, as the BDR is commanded and managed by the army regulations,” Shafique Ahmed, minister for Law, Justice and parliamentary affairs told reporters. “It will be ensure justice,” he said. The revolt, which lasted 33 hours and ended after the rebels laid down their arms, stoked concerns over the stability of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's two-month-old civilian government. Hasina has promised to get to the bottom of the munity -- initially believed to have been caused by disputes over pay and command structure -- and bring the perpetrators to justice. Bangladesh has a history of frequent coup attempts and political intervention by security forces. The BDR, responsible mainly for guarding the country's borders, is traditionally commanded by officers drawn from the army. Most of the victims of the mutiny were army officers and their families. Investigators said so far they had identified 40 troops who were involved in carnage and arson during the mutiny. The rest were being interrogated. A human rights group Thursday urged the Bangladeshi government not to give the army responsibility for any trials of border guards accused of staging last month's deadly mutiny in the capital. The Bangladesh military has promised that all those behind the revolt, in which more than 70 people were killed including 56 senior army officers, will be “given exemplary and quick punishment by a special tribunal.”
