The United States imposed Global Magnitsky sanctions on Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion and six of its top commanders, including Benazir Ahmed, in December 2021. Ahmed had served as chief of the Rapid Action Battalion and later as Inspector General of Police.

The battalion emerged in 2004 under a Bangladesh Nationalist Party coalition government led by Khaleda Zia. It was created in response to public panic over a wave of violent crime and nascent Islamist militancy.

The force was placed under the Ministry of Home Affairs through an amendment to the Armed Police Battalion Act that allowed the secondment of personnel from the military and intelligence services. Soldiers from the army, navy and air force served in the battalion without shedding their martial culture. Operations by the battalion against the militant group Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh won praise at home and abroad.

Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League took power in Bangladesh in 2009. Between that year and August 2024, human rights groups documented more than 2,500 extrajudicial killings by security forces in Bangladesh, along with over 600 enforced disappearances during the same period, according to human rights groups. The battalion was among the security forces active during that period.

Aynaghar is a network of clandestine military and paramilitary-run black sites where dissidents were subjected to prolonged isolation and waterboarding, sometimes for years, completely cut off from the legal system. The Global Magnitsky sanctions imposed in December 2021 cited the battalion's human rights record as the basis for the designation.