Dhaka, July 20: Bangladesh’s elite anti-crime force arrested 44 top leaders and activists of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, amid fears that the banned Islamist militant organisation was trying to regroup, a news report said on Sunday.
According to an official of the anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), they have arrested a total of 44 leaders and cadres of JMB during last six months, Bangladesh’s national news agency said today.
Moreover, the headquarters and its 12 battalions so far have arrested 475 JMB cadres in the country from 2005 to 2008, the report said.
Inspector General of Police Nur Mohammad said the police and other security agencies were in close coordination in line with a recent government directive in a bid to intensify the anti-militancy campaign in the country.
“The militant groups are now literally on the run because of the stringent vigil of police and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies,” Mohammad was quoted as saying by the news agency.
Commander SM Abul Kalam Azad, the RAB spokesman, said their men so far arrested have 46 members of JMB’s highest policymaking body (Majlish-e-Shura) of the banned outfit, alongside 103 Ehsar members.
A total of 17 members ‘suicidal squad’ of JMB were arrested by RAB while 10 members of “Gayebi Ehshar” (hidden cadre) were held during the period, according to the RAB director.
According to the RAB spokesman the list of arrested extremists “included JMB chief Shaikh Abdur Rahman and HuJI (Harkatul Jihad Islami) chief Mutfi Abdul Hannan”.
He said other prominent figures who were detained during the period included JMB’s second in command Siddiqul Islam Bangla Bhai and the outfit’s military wing chief Ataur Rahman Sunny. Six of the JMB kingpins, including Shaikh Rahman, Bangla Bhai and Sunny were executed two years ago.
The RAB earlier this month arrested the second in command and military commander of a newly emerged militant outfit ‘Islam O Muslim’, a JMB offshoot from a border town in northwestern Chapainawabganj.
Security officials recently said they launched an intensified anti-militancy campaign amid reports that the outlawed groups were trying to regroup in northwestern region under a fresh recruitment drive.
Security forces last month arrested the JMB’s IT wing chief Emranul Haque Rajib, a civil engineer, weeks after they netted the top explosive exert of the outfit, Jahedul Islam Sumon alias Mizan from Dhaka.
JMB, one of several outlawed Islamist groups seeking to turn mostly Muslim Bangladesh into a sharia-based Islamic state, was blamed for a series of deadly bombings in late 2005. Banned JMB members, who fled from their hideouts during the crackdown in 2005 after the August 17 serial bomb blasts, were trying to regroup.
Sheikh Hasina, who assumed office as Prime Minister in January after a landslide election win on December 29, 2008, has floated the idea of a regional terror mechanism to combat the menace in South Asia.
-Agencies