Fifteen Days After the 'I Will Be Free' Call, the Gallows: The Deepening Mystery Around Sweety Akter's Execution in Saudi Arabia
In the yard of a dilapidated hut in Nagar Chhawali village, in Mirzapur upazila of Tangail, sits an elderly man named Fazl Mia, the lines of age on his skin mingled with the marks of poverty. The youngest daughter of the family he has kept together with a lifetime of sweat and tears is now thousands of miles away in a desert land. Her name is Sweety Akter. Three and a half years ago, driven by want, she travelled to Saudi Arabia to lighten the burden on her father's shoulders.
Her parents had hoped the money she sent home would set the family's wheels turning again, and for the first few months she did send money. Then one day Fazl Mia's phone rang — and the voice of Sweety on the other end held no relief, only breathless terror. She told him she was in prison. The family learned that she had been framed after a dispute with fellow women workers.
Then came a long, stifling year — months with no contact at all. Eventually the calls resumed, perhaps once a month, but they brought no clear answers, only a faint hope of release. The most dramatic moment came late last September, when Sweety told her father with complete confidence: "Baba, just two more months. Within two months I will be freed from prison." A lawyer, she said, was fighting her case.
Just 15 days after that phone call, on October 14, Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry announced that two Bangladeshis had been executed in the Makkah region. One name stood out on that list: Sweety Akter. The other was Nazrul Islam. According to the Saudi announcement, they were put to death for immoral activities inside a mosque in Makkah. Why was a young woman who had been counting the days to her release suddenly taken to the gallows? That question has now wrapped the whole affair in mystery.
An investigation by The Daily Star has uncovered an even more startling picture behind the executions. The investigation obtained a highly confidential memo of the Bangladesh Consulate in Jeddah. According to that document, on September 30 the consulate received a list of Bangladeshi prisoners held in prisons in western Saudi Arabia — 306 names in all, among them Nazrul Islam and Sweety Akter. The list showed Nazrul detained on August 1, 2023, under the cybercrime law, and Sweety detained the very next day on charges of adultery. Yet while 147 prisoners on the list had sentences ranging from one month to 15 years recorded beside their names, beside neither Nazrul's nor Sweety's name was there any mention of a death sentence. It was not even clearly written what sentence, if any, had been handed to them. In other words, two prisoners whose punishments were not even clearly recorded in the consulate's own papers were executed on October 14.
The mystery has deepened further over the pair's relationship. After the Saudi announcement, social media began presenting Nazrul and Sweety as husband and wife. But Nazrul's father, Abdul Bashir, told the media in plain words that Sweety was far from being his son's wife — his family did not even know her; they had only heard that Nazrul and Sweety may have worked at the same place. Sweety's mother, Johra Begum, says her daughter was married once before, but that marriage did not last; she never married again and has no husband or children. How their relationship was then presented in the Saudi legal process remains an open question.
The biggest question now concerns the photograph. In the picture published by the Saudi authorities after the execution, Sweety's parents can find no resemblance at all to their daughter. The official account says the woman was identified as Sweety Akter on the basis of her national identity card and her travel clearance. But a mother is directly challenging that claim: the photograph, she says, is not of her daughter. It has also emerged that many people in Saudi Arabia knew Sweety as "Seeti". Whether that subtle similarity of names points to a terrible mix-up of identity is the question now haunting the family.
The affair has also exposed friction between the Bangladesh Consulate in Jeddah and the Saudi authorities. In an emergency meeting with officials of the Saudi foreign ministry, Bangladesh's Consul General raised hard questions: were the two Bangladeshis given any opportunity of legal defence? Why was the Bangladesh government not informed of the death sentences in advance? And why was the sentence kept hidden from the regular prisoner lists? Bangladesh has now sent a fresh diplomatic note — a note verbale — seeking the full details of the case, the trial documents, and an explanation of the executions.
But no exchange of letters can bring back two lost lives. At the centre of it all stands one mother: Johra Begum. For a daughter who gave up the best years of her youth in a desert land to meet her family's needs, this end is impossible for her to accept. "His father still digs earth to eat... I said, Ma, I won't let my old father work — I will go abroad," the mother recalls her daughter saying, words that still make her weep. She does not want justice, nor compensation. She only wants to know where her daughter really is, and what truly became of her. The family has still not been officially told anything; even if Sweety truly is dead, they do not know where her body lies.
Information hidden in a secret document, the hope of release in that last phone call, a face that does not match the published photograph, and conflicting claims about a marriage — taken together, the case of Sweety Akter remains an unsolved mystery. Did Sweety really mount the gallows, or did the crime of another fall upon her shoulders through a near-identical name? There is still no answer. In that yard in Tangail, Johra Begum's sleepless nights wait for only one thing — to learn, at the very least, what her daughter's final fate truly was.
