Bangladeshi police said yesterday they had arrested a top Islamic party leader in connection with a deadly grenade attack that wounded Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2004.
Maulana Sheikh Abdus Salam, head of the Islamic Democratic Party (IDP), was detained by police on Monday and remanded in custody for questioning over the grenade attack that left more than 20 people dead, the police said.
Salam was a founder and former chief of the banned Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI), which has been accused of carrying out the attack in the capital that also killed the wife of current Bangladesh President Zillur Rahman.
“He has been arrested in connection with the grenade attack case. He was a former emir (chief) of HuJI and police suspect that he could have a role in the attack,” deputy commissioner of police Ruhul Amin told AFP.
Hasina survived the blast but one of her ears was severely damaged.
Salam, who fought in the Afghan war against the Russians, returned to form the HuJI in Bangladesh with hundreds of other war veterans in the early 1990s.
The party was banned in 2005 after police blamed it for a series of deadly blasts, including an attack in May 2004 that injured Britain’s most senior diplomat in the country and killed three people.
Three men including the then HuJI chief Mufti Abdul Hannan were sentenced to death in 2008 after they were convicted of murder, use of explosives and masterminding the attack on the envoy.
Mufti Hannan, now in custody, is also one of the prime accused in the grenade attack case.
Maulana Salam broke away from the HuJI and launched the IDP in October 2008 ahead of December general elections. But the election commission barred the party from contesting the polls.
Last month police also named former home minister Lutfozzman Babar, currently in prison for illegal arms possession, as a suspect in the grenade attack.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday declared that her Muslim-majority nation would never allow international terrorists to operate in the country.
“Bangladesh will never allow its territory to be used for launching any terrorist activity,” Hasina told the secretary general of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu.
The head of the 57-nation group met with the Bangladeshi premier in Dhaka during a
three-day visit.
Ihsanoglu said his organisation is working towards the development of education, science and technology, trade and commerce and curbing terrorism.
Hasina also sought OIC assistance to fight the possible adverse impacts of climate change on the South Asian country, her deputy press secretary Mahbubul Haque Shakil said.
Bangladesh is identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as one of the countries most vulnerable to the effects of global warming.
The OIC chief also planned to meet with Bangladeshi President Zillur Rahman and senior government officials, and was scheduled to deliver a lecture on the Islamic bloc’s vision of key challenges for the 21st century. AFP/DPA |
