AFP
Dhaka
Bangladesh yesterday banned an Islamist militant group suspected of involvement in the murders of atheist bloggers that sparked protests in Dhaka and outrage around the world, an
official said.
The home ministry’s move to outlaw the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) comes almost a week after police asked the government to ban the group, suspecting it of being behind the deaths of three bloggers
this year.
Police had also earlier charged ABT members with the 2013 murder of blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider.
“The (junior home minister) today signed a government order, outlawing the militant organisation Ansarullah Bangla Team,” Sharif Mahmud, a ministry spokesman, said.
A police spokesman said last week that initial police findings implicated ABT in the recent killings of bloggers including Ananta Bijoy Das, who was hacked to death by machete-wielding attackers on his way to work.
The 33-year-old was the third secular blogger to be killed in the Muslim-majority nation since February when Bangladeshi-born US citizen Avijit Roy, a writer and moderator of a blog site, was hacked to death in the capital Dhaka.
Fellow writers said Das was on a hit-list drawn up by militants who were behind Roy’s killing.
No one has yet been charged over Das’s death, but his brother has filed a criminal case saying he was murdered by an “extremist fanatic group”.
Hours after Das’s murder, a group called Ansar Al-Islam said on Twitter that Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) was responsible for the killing and warned of more to come.
Bangladesh is an officially secular country but more than 90% of its 160mn people are Muslim.
ABT is the sixth Islamist militant group to be banned in the country, which has seen a rise in attacks by religious extremists in recent years.
AQIS previously claimed responsibility for the February 26 attack in Dhaka that killed Roy and also badly injured his wife. An Islamist has been arrested over his murder but not formally charged.
Two held over IS recruitment: Two members of a banned Bangladeshi radical group have been arrested for trying to recruit young Muslims to fight with the Islamic State organisation, police said
yesterday.
Aminul Islam Baig, 40, and Shakib bin Kamal, 30, were both arrested on Sunday night during raids at two addresses in Dhaka in which officers also recovered jihadist literature and computer equipment, police added.
Dhaka police spokesman Jahangir Alam said both men were members of the banned Islamist militant outfit Jamayetul
Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).
“They are active members of JMB and admitted their connection with IS,” Alam said.
During questioning, Baig and Kamal provided a list of 20 accomplices who had been helping them try and persuade young Muslims to join the thousands of foreigners already fighting alongside IS, which has declared a “caliphate” across vast parts of Syria and Iraq.
“They have been trying to recruit people all over the country to fight with the IS militants in Syria and other countries of the Middle East,” Alam added.
Another police spokesman, Monirul Islam, told a news conference in Dhaka that Baig was the head of information technology at a multinational company in Bangladesh, without naming the organisation, while Kamal was a teacher at a renowned school.
Islam said the pair would be produced before court soon, adding that police would “seek remand for further interrogation”.
