Home ›› 29 Jan 2023 ›› Governance
Members of the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police arrested six members of Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B) in different parts of Dhaka on Friday.
The CTTC conducted separate raids in different parts in the city on Friday night and arrested the six Huji-B activists and seized mobile phones containing videos on how to make bombs, said CTTC chief Md Asaduzzaman at a press briefing on Saturday, reports BSS.
The arrested HuJI-B members are Suruzzaman, 45, Abdullah Al Mamun, 23, Fakhrul Islam, 58 and his son Saiful Islam, 24, Abdullah Al Mamun, 46 and Din Islam, 25.
Md Asaduzzaman said Fakhrul, a king-pin of Huji-B who was once worked as a security guard at a madrasa in Gazipur, went to Pakistan in 1988 where he met a Bangladeshi born Al-Qaeda commander Mufti Jakir Hossain.
With Jakir, Fakhrul went to Afghanistan and took training on arms and then met Al-Qaeda leader Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, said the chief of CTTC, a specialised branch of Bangladesh Police formed to tackle terrorism and transnational crime.
Fakhrul came back to Bangladesh in 1998, he said, adding that Fakhrul was collecting new members and money. He was conducting activities through social media to continue the militant activities, said Md Asaduzzaman.
“The arrested persons used to use secret and encrypted apps to communicate among themselves and share extremism related contents, including bomb making manuals and videos,” he added.
As part of HuJI-B’s plan, Fakhrul and his son Saiful along with other HuJI members gave a huge amount of money to Rohingyas in Cox’s Bazar camps with an aim to recruit them to their outfit, said a CTTC official.
The Harkat ul Jihad al Islami Bangladesh was established in 1992, reportedly with assistance from Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front (IIF). On April 30, 1992, several of the HuJI-B leaders addressed a press conference at the Jatiya Press Club in capital Dhaka and demanded that Bangladesh be converted into an Islamic State.
The outfit’s activities, however, were noticed in June 1996 after the Awami League (AL) came to power.
The HuJI-B was proscribed by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led coalition Government on October 17, 2005.
The US Department of State on February 16, 2008 designated HuJI-B as a Foreign Terrorist Organization Pursuant to Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
