A senior telecom official on Tuesday told the International Crimes Tribunal-1 that former state minister Junaid Ahmed Palak instructed him to shut down the internet at the submarine cable level during the 2024 mass uprising.
Mirza Kamal Ahmed, the then acting managing director of the Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, gave the statement as the fifth prosecution witness in the crimes against humanity case against Palak and deposed prime minister’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy, also her ICT adviser.
The three-judge tribunal, chaired by Justice Md Golam Mortuza Mozumder, fixed April 28 for his cross-examination.
Joy is currently absconding, while Palak has been arrested and was produced before the tribunal.
Mirza Kamal Ahmed said that on the night of July 18, 2024, Palak called him and asked why he had not followed instructions from the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission. The minister also asked how long it would take to shut down the internet at the submarine cable level.
He said that he told Palak that it would take around 15 minutes and that the then state minister then asked him to shut it down and confirm the matter.
Following the instruction, Kamal said, he informed his operations team to shut down the submarine cable systems in Cox’s Bazar and Kuakata. The shutdown was completed within 15 minutes.
The witness said that he was initially surprised by the order, as the internet had never been shut down at the submarine cable level before.
He had earlier agreed only to limited shutdowns at the International Internet Gateway level.
The witness described a series of instructions from BTRC officials throughout the evening, including directions through phone calls and WhatsApp groups involving telecom operators.
He said that, by about 9:00pm, most operators had already shut down their bandwidth, leaving only submarine connections active. Shortly after, the instruction came to shut those down as well.
According to the witness, the shutdown affected a major portion of the country’s internet capacity, as submarine cables carried about 40 per cent of total bandwidth at the time.
He also told the tribunal that internet services were partially restored on July 23 following fresh instructions, and were again shut down and reopened on August 5 based on further directives.
