Bangladesh police release student leaders after unrest

Bangladesh police on Thursday freed six student leaders whose campaign against civil service job quotas sparked deadly nationwide unrest, as the government looked to calm tensions and forestall fresh demonstrations.

Students Against Discrimination staged nationwide rallies last month that ended in a police crackdown and the deaths of at least 206 people, according to an AFP count of police and hospital data.

The group's leadership were among thousands picked up in the police dragnet that followed some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's 15-year tenure.

"All six quota movement coordinators have been returned to their families this afternoon," deputy commissioner Junaed Alam Sarkar said.

Principal leader Nahid Islam and two others had been forcibly discharged from a hospital in the capital Dhaka last Friday by plainclothes detectives and taken to an unknown location.

His father Badrul Islam confirmed to AFP that Nahid had returned home early Thursday afternoon but did not give any more details.

Three others were detained in the following days with the government saying at the time they had been held for their own safety.

Justice minister Anisul Huq told AFP on Thursday that all six had volunteered to be in police custody.

"They came willingly. They said they wanted to go. They are allowed to return to their parents," he added.

Hasina's government restored order after deploying troops, imposing a curfew and shutting down the mobile internet network across the country of 170 million for 11 days.

More than 10,000 people were arrested in the wake of the unrest, according to local media.

- 'Arbitrary and unlawful' -

Small and scattered protests resumed in cities around Bangladesh this week after other members of Students Against Discrimination ended a moratorium on demonstrations.

They vowed to restart their campaign after the government ignored a Monday deadline for their leaders to be freed.

"Their detention was arbitrary and unlawful. There was growing national and international criticism," University of Oslo researcher Mubashar Hasan told AFP.

He added that the release of the leaders signalled the government was looking to "de-escalate tensions" with the protest movement.

Demonstrations broke out last month over the reintroduction of a quota scheme that reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups.

With around 18 million young Bangladeshis out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute employment crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to the ruling Awami League.

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs last week but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the most contentious quota category entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.