A 30-day clock is now running for Bangladesh to formally request the return of Benazir Ahmed, its former police chief, who was taken into custody in Dubai under an Interpol Red Notice tied to a corruption case. Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed told parliament on Sunday that authorities in the United Arab Emirates flagged the detention through an email received on June 12, setting in motion a diplomatic process to bring the fugitive officer to trial.
The minister told lawmakers that UAE federal law requires any extradition request to move through diplomatic channels within a month of an arrest, a deadline that Dhaka’s home and foreign ministries are now working against. According to the home minister, the National Central Bureau in Abu Dhabi conveyed that under UAE law a formal request must arrive within 30 days from the date of arrest. The Anti-Corruption Commission is assembling the case files, warrants, and investigative records that will underpin the request before it is transmitted to Abu Dhabi.
“Benazir Ahmed was arrested on June 12 and he will be extradited soon,” Salahuddin Ahmed said. “An Interpol Red Notice was issued against Benazir.”
He framed the detention as a turning point for accountability in the country. “This is a historic achievement. Through these efforts, we will be able to break the culture of impunity,” the minister said, adding, “We want to assure the nation that no perpetrator, however powerful, is above the law.”
The Red Notice itself dates back more than a year. Bangladesh police sent a letter to Interpol on February 12, 2025 seeking assistance, and the notice was issued on April 11, 2025, with Interpol asking the UAE interior ministry to locate and detain him. Benazir spent that period outside Bangladesh after departing in early May 2024, around the time the Anti-Corruption Commission opened its inquiry into the wealth attributed to him and his family.
Benazir’s career placed him at the center of Bangladesh’s security apparatus for well over a decade. He commanded the Rapid Action Battalion from January 2015 to April 2020, then served as inspector general of police until late September 2022, after an earlier stint heading the Dhaka Metropolitan Police. Washington sanctioned him in 2021 over the elite force’s record of disappearances and killings during his command. The Rapid Action Battalion, an armed unit long criticized by rights monitors, became a focus of investigations launched after the government changed hands.
The case against him extends well beyond financial wrongdoing. Benazir is being tried in absentia before the International Crimes Tribunal-1 on crimes against humanity charges connected to the enforced disappearance of 13 people during his time leading the battalion, one of 17 defendants in that proceeding. Among the co-accused are Sheikh Hasina, her former security adviser, retired Major General Tarique Ahmed Siddique, and former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal.
The wealth figure at the heart of the corruption file has been quantified by investigators. The Anti-Corruption Commission’s charge sheet alleges the accumulation of Tk 110.4 million in illegal wealth, and a copy of the international arrest warrant from a Dhaka court is being translated into Arabic for submission to Dubai’s judicial authorities to limit the chances of bail.
Hasina’s own removal in August 2024 came through a student-led uprising that drove her from office and into exile, an upheaval that exposed the network of clandestine detention sites later tied to figures named alongside Benazir. Police headquarters officials put the total number of cases he now faces at 17, including charges of murder linked to the mass protests of that summer.
