Suspected Al Qaeda operative arrested

Rapid Action Battalion men presenting Rusel-bin-Sattar at a press conference yesterday.

DPA/Dhaka

A suspected Al Qaeda agent was arrested in Bangladesh yesterday for allegedly spreading a call by the chief of the global terrorist group to launch jihad against anti-Islam elements in the Muslim-majority country, police said.

The Rapid Action Battalion captured Rusel-bin-Sattar, 22, at a village in Tangail district, some 100km from the capital Dhaka, for posting the audio message by Ayman al-Zawahiri on the Internet, said battalion officer Ziaul Hasan Khan.

Three mobile phones, two laptops and books on jihad were also seized, Khan said.

Sattar had administrative control over a number of websites run by the Islamist group, Khan added.

The security forces targeted Sattar after an audio recording reportedly by al-Zawahiri last week called on Muslims in Bangladesh to join an Islamic uprising to resist the “evil plans of leading criminals in the Subcontinent (India) and the West against Islam.”

“As I follow the organisation’s Facebook group like many other Islamic pages and groups I receive e-mail from it automatically,” he said.

Sattar, a third-year student at a textile institute, said the allegation was virtually true that I’ve circulated the audio clip through Facebook and my blogs. But he expressed his ignorance about the audio clip’s main source.

“I’ve no idea when and where it was made and uploaded first,” he said.

Media reports said the 30-minute message was released by Al Qaeda’s media arm. It reportedly referred to suppression by police of a rally by Hefazat-e-Islami Bangladesh in May last year that led to 30 deaths, and the trial of Islamist leaders for war crimes in connection with the country’s war of independence against Pakistan.