Blindfolded, handcuffed and bundled out of his secret prison for the first time in eight years, Bangladeshi barrister Ahmad Bin Quasem held his breath and listened for the sound of a cocked pistol.
Instead he was tossed from a car and into a muddy ditch on Dhaka's outskirts -- alive, at liberty and with no knowledge of the national upheaval that had prompted his abrupt release.