Five days after a US Special Forces officer died under mysterious circumstances in a Dhaka top-end hotel room, an American national, who worked for a private security contracting firm and worked on an anti-terrorism assistance (ATA) programme of the US State Department in Rajshahi, took a US-Bangla Airlines flight to Dhaka before leaving Bangladesh the same evening.
The body of 50-year-old Terrence Arvelle Jackson, a US Special Forces (Airborne) officer whose mission to Bangladesh – along with other soldiers – was classified, was found dead in Room No. 808, The Westin, Dhaka, on August 31.
Northeast News was the first to report (on September 1 and 7) that Jackson entered Bangladesh in April 2025 before travelling to unspecified locations in the country. He was involved in imparting military training to Bangladeshi Army personnel.
Speaking to Northeast News, Rajshahi Metropolitan Police (RMP) Commissioner Abu Sufiyan said, “he (the visitor at Rajshahi) suddenly told us that there was a budgetary cut at his US-based company and he could therefore not continue with the ATA programme”.
A deputy commissioner of police in charge of the RMP’s Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit, said he “cannot be seen any longer” and that the ATA programme, aimed at combating terrorism and extremism in Bangladesh, ended a few months ago.
Inquiries by Northeast News suggest that Richard Daniel Roman, a resident of Leland in North Carolina, abruptly left the State Department-backed ATA programme, which had begun in January 2023 in Bangladesh’s largest and solitary police training facility located at Sardah in Rajshahi, on September 5, although he had served notice to the RMP bosses shortly before this date.
Holder of US passport number A17975636, Roman is said to have left Rajshahi’s Grand Riverview Hotel, right opposite the RMP headquarters, at 3 pm on September 5 (a Friday) to take a US-Bangladesh Airlines flight scheduled for 5:20 pm for Dhaka.
It is presumed that he left Dhaka the same night. It is learnt that the bills for the expenses incurred by Roman, including room rent, were paid for by his employer, Makwa Global Solutions LLC, even as there is some evidence to indicate that his last hotel bill was settled in cash.
An intriguing feature of the US embassy’s efforts to organise training programmes for Bangladesh law enforcement agencies, including the RMP, was the use of US private security contracting companies who have been involved in operations in West Asia and the Gulf countries.
It may be recalled that Jackson’s booking at The Westin was initiated – via email – by the US Embassy in Dhaka.
Roman’s LinkedIn page, however, says that he continues to function at Rajshahi where he joined the ATA’s “on-site” training programme in January 2023.
His role entailed providing “mentorship, advisory support, and tactical training to specialized law enforcement units across three major metropolitan regions in Bangladesh, supporting a force of over 120 personnel”.
He did this as an employee of Makwa Global Solutions LLC which is headquartered at McLean, Virginia.
Makwa claims to deliver “specialized training, advisory, and operational support to enhance global security efforts”, while its team “assists foreign law enforcement and security organizations in developing the capacity to detect, deter, and counter terrorism through tailored training, equipment support, and risk management”.
Toward fulfilling his role as a mentor, Roman “designed and executed structured weekly and monthly operational and training schedules”, “collaborated closely with command staff to align expectations and timelines, leveraging strong interpersonal and communication skills” and “prioritized mission-critical tasks and developed systematic workflows to ensure efficient execution”.
More importantly, a senior Bangladesh Police source confirmed that Roman imparted firearms training to trainees at the Sardah field firing range, the only one in the country.
Besides, he “oversaw equipment inventory, maintaining strict standards for accuracy, accountability, and readiness”, “delivered dynamic and diverse training programs across multiple regions, adapting scenarios to evolving operational needs” and “facilitated effective communication across teams, agencies, and stakeholders through timely, detailed weekly reporting to appropriate command-level personnel”.
A deeper dive into Roman’s professional background reveals that he played role in the State Department as the lead instructor for the organisation’s anti-terrorism assistance initiative beginning in 2011 and during which time he oversaw and delivered training in over 20 countries.
Between 2008 and 2010, Roman worked in Iraq as an International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Advisor, “leading security operations, implementing force protection strategies, and advising Iraqi police and military teams”. In a brief that he wrote for RMP, Roman wrote that he “specializes in coordinating multinational training and operating in high-stakes environments”.
His “expertise” also “includes SOP development, crisis response, strategic planning, and cross-cultural collaboration to enhance global security.
He is also recognized for his operational readiness and mentoring host nation security forces, acting as a liaison between partner nations and US Embassy teams”.
The only occasion that Roman was publicly named, before he left Rajshahi, was in an April 11, 2025, news report related to the inauguration of a two-week course on crisis response and the launch of RMP’s 24-member Crisis Response Team. Roman is said to have spoken during the inauguration.
Around the time that Roman was in Rajshahi, where he took up rooms at Grand Riverview Hotel, which is right opposite the RMP headquarters, a few other US nationals operated in the same district on ATA and cybersecurity-related programmes that were backed and supported by the US embassy, which at the time, was headed by the then Ambassador Peter Haas.
Another American national, Michael Markevich, a cybersecurity expert, also stayed at the Grand Riverview Hotel. However, there is no information to suggest that Roman and Markevich knew each other.
Between January 2023 and beyond July-August 2024, several other US nationals who worked for US security contracting and consulting firms fleeted in and out of Bangladesh.
They were contracted – by US government agencies such as the State Department – for law enforcement, security and cyber-security training programmes for the Bangladesh Police.
One such individual is Ricky Chambers, described in official communications as an ATA advisor but is a “US State Department-vetted GATA II/SPEAR Trainer”.
The Global Anti-Terrorism Assistance-II Programme “fosters cooperation between US law enforcement, rule of law agencies, and partner nations engaged in antiterrorism efforts across several levels”.
As a SPEAR trainer – Special Programme for Embassy Augmentation and Response – Chambers, a former FBI special agent who investigated the bombings at the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam (both in 1998), is part of a global team of professionals that train and sustain “US-vetted local nationals as quick reaction force (QRF) to US Embassy threats”.
Based in the UAE, Chambers was in Rajshahi in January 2022 when the then RMP Commissioner Abu Kalam Siddique inaugurated a cybercrime unit and a two-week course that was launched under the supervision of the US Embassy’s ATA programme.
Chambers had previously worked for the notorious Blackwater Worldwide (subsequently renamed Academi and then Constellis Holdings) which had worked on special missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Chambers served as Blackwater’s regional director of training in Afghanistan starting in 2003.
At that time, he handled contracts for the US Drug Enforcement Agency and Afghan narcotics/border police training programmes.
Chambers was part of a project to raise an 800-strong secret commando force for the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
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Between January 2022 and April 2023, three other US nationals, Scot Bradeen and Jeremy Martin (cybersecurity instructors) and ATA Coordinator Asky Hagidok conducted different course sessions for the RMP officers.
However, one of the key US nationals in this matrix of security-related activities is Theodore ‘Ted’ Craig who worked on “contract” as a “Senior CT Program Advisor, US Embassy Dhaka, via Cayuse Technologies Senior”.
In this capacity, he served out of the US embassy in Dhaka between February 2023 and June 2024.
His exit from Dhaka was about a month before that of Peter Haas who departed the Bangladesh capital on July 23, 2024.
After serving in the State Department as a career foreign service officer for 29 years, during which time he served in various capacities in countries in Latin America, South Asia and Africa, Craig took on contract employment with his parent organisation for two years (2021-2023).
In June 2024, he joined Cayuse Federal Services, a private contracting company headquartered in Oregon and offices in Arlington (Virginia) and Hawaii.
Cayuse Federal Services’ core competencies are in homeland security, operations support services for airbases, ranges and airfields, military munitions response and IT services.
