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Bye, Bye Bangla: The details
Bangla Bhai, the tyrant who once spread Islamic militancy with the administration's protection, was captured wounded yesterday from a remote Mymensingh hideout after skirmishes with the Rapid Action Battalion (Rab).
Wounded is good. Maimed would be better...
As the splinter-hit and explosive-burned militant top gun was carted along the rutted roads of Rampur village in Muktagachha, the curtain dropped on his reign of terror in the northern Bangladesh where he killed and tortured scores amid the government's denial about his existence.
Oh, that was the best part...
Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai was flown to Dhaka by a helicopter and admitted to BDR Hospital after treatment at Mymensingh Medical College Hospital. Despite having splinter wounds in the abdomen and burns almost all over his body, his condition is now stable, the state minister for home said.
"Splinter wounds in the abdomen"? Is that like gutshot? There is a God...
Bangla Bhai's arrest came four days after the dramatic surrender of JMB supremo Shaekh Abdur Rahman.
"You'll never take me alive, coppers!"
"Yer surrounded, Shaekh! Come out witcher hands up!"
"Hokay."
Five months ago the government announced Tk 50 lakh bounty on the head of Bangla Bhai, the operations commander of banned Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB).

OPERATION MUKTAGACHHA
The Rab intelligence team and Rab-9 rushed to Mymensingh in the early hours yesterday and captured Bangla Bhai's wife Fahima and minor son Saad from a house on RK Mission Road in the town at about 5:00am.
Can't tell for sure with the veil and all, but Fahima looks like a toothsome lass of maybe 14 or 15...
Acting on her information, the Rab men led by its intelligence wing chief Lt Col Gulzar Uddin Ahmed encircled the house of a village doctor Umed Ali at Rampur in Muktagachha, 30 kilometres off Mymensingh, at about 7:00am and started searching for Bangla Bhai. As Rab Sergeant Rafiq, who was posted in an adjacent tin-roofed house, tried to peep into the room to see who were inside, Bangla Bhai shot him once in the head with a submachine carbine. The Rab men then took the wounded sergeant away to safety.
"Sergeant Rafiq! Shinny up on that roof and see if it's him!"
"Yessir!"
[shinny shinny shinny]
[BANG! BANG! BANGETY BANG!]
"Owwwwwwww!... [Thud!]... I think it's him, sir!"
"When Bangla Bhai hit Sergeant Rafiq, our runner Sattar identified him [Bangla Bhai] and raised an alarm," Commander Mahsuk Hasan, Rab media wing chief, told reporters at Mymensingh.
"ALARM! ALARM!"
At this point Rab intelligence wing chief Lt Col Gulzar Uddin Ahmed asked Bangla Bhai on a loudhailer to surrender saying that Rab has encircled the whole area. "Bangla Bhai, you have no way to escape. It will be better for you to surrender," Gulzar said.
"Throw down the hardware and come out witcher hands up, Bangla!"
A couple of minutes after Bangla Bhai attacked Sergeant Rafiq, a powerful bomb went off inside the tin-roofed room where Bangla Bhai was staying.
[KABOOM!]
The explosion destroyed the roof and a corner of the room caught fire.
"Fire! Holy shit! Allahu akbar! I'm on fire!"
"While the room was burning, we saw Bangla Bhai at the windows," Lt Col Gulzar told reporters. "Then I again asked him to surrender... I told him that we'll be forced to open fire since he has injured our man."
"Hang it up, Bangla! You shot our guy and we'll be forced to shoot back! Besides, you're on fire!"
As the injured militant leader asked Rab to douse the fire,
"Help! Help! I'm on fire!"
the Rab men told him to come out first. "We put pressure on him to surrender and he had no other alternative," said Gulzar. "We told him to throw away his firearm."
"Drop the rosco an' come out witcher hands up!"
"Aaaargh! I'm on fire!"
Finally Bangla Bhai, in trousers and black T-shirt, came out of the house at around 7:30am and the Rab men took him into their custody.
"Stick 'em up, Bangla!"
Injury marks were seen in his left hand and lower abdomen. His beard and hair were burned.
"I don't feel so good..."
"You look a mess."
Bangla Bhai's bodyguard Masud was found lying badly injured in the explosion.
"Who's that?"
"Just my bodyguard, Masud. Just ignore him."
"Is he dead?"
"I dunno."
"Cheeze. He looks like he's been fried!"
The whole house was burned and only the pillars were standing amidst the debris. "The bomb exploded inside the house, but we cannot say whether he tried to commit suicide," Gulzar told The Daily Star.
"It's the cops, boss! I'll fix them! Throw me that bomb!... NO! Don't... [KABOOM!]"
After the operation, the Rab men extinguished the fire with the help of locals.
"Another bucket over here, I think..."
Injured Rab Sergeant Rafiq was in the meantime flown in the capital by a helicopter and admitted to Combined Military Hospital (CMH).
"Good man, Rafiq!"
"Thanks, boss! Owwww!"
"Sorry."
The Rab men recovered a sub-machine carbine, its magazine, one foreign-made pistol, one machete, a knife, four batteries, torchlight and a cellphone set from the burned house. They also seized two locally-made revolvers, six bullets, four knives, two rifle bullets, one live bomb and two machetes from a hole adjacent to the house.
"Send Sergeant Rafiq to retrieve the weapons cache!"
"Sir! He's being evacuated!"
"Then send that other guy, the one with the pretty wife!"
"Yessir. Corporal Uriah! Front and center!"
Sources said JMB Shura member Salahuddin, now absconding, had arranged the Muktagachha house for Bangla Bhai.
There goes his security deposit...
Rab sources said they would file three cases -- one under Arms Act, another under Explosives Substance Act and the third for assaulting the law enforcers.
How about one for being the head of a terror network?
That bill is still stalled in committee. Senator Mahmoud keeps insisting that 'terrorist' is spelled with a 'Z'.
POST-OPERATION SCENARIO
The Rab men handcuffed the militant leader and took him to Muktagachha Hospital where he was given first aid. Then Bangla Bhai and Masud were taken away from the spot by a rickshaw-van. The Rab vehicles were waiting at Battola, five kilometres off Rampur. The two injured militants were taken in a Rab car to the MMCH where doctors operated on Bangla Bhai at 11:30am. His bodyguard Masud with a severely burned arm and injuries all over the body was treated at the same hospital.
"Don't put him there! We just changed those sheets yesterday, dammit!"
While the infamous militant leader was undergoing operation, the Rab men took his wife to the hospital. And she identified her husband.
"Is that your husband, madam?"
"Yes. I'd know that turban anywhere."
The doctors after checking his pulse and blood pressure said his health condition is stable. "At one stage, he started telling his past at the operation theatre," Dr Mohammad Ali Siddiqui, who operated on him there, told reporters at the hospital.
"Yersh... Lemme tell ya about ma operation..."
"More anesthetic! Quick!"
After the surgery, Bangla Bhai was taken to Mymensingh Circuit House. A helicopter of Air Force came from the capital and left for Dhaka with Bangla Bhai and others at 1:15pm.

AMANULLAH'S TIPS LED TO CAPTURE
The Rab men were on a manhunt on information extracted from Abdur Rahman, his brother Ataur Rahman Sunny and son-in-law Abdul Awal, who are now being quizzed together by Task Force Intelligence in Dhaka.
"Hand me that truncheon, wouldja Mahmoud?... Thanks."
Besides, they got important clues from Bangla Bhai's close aide Amanullah who was arrested by Rab-9 in Sylhet Sunday night.
"Stick 'em up, Amanullah!"
"It's the RAB! I'll talk! I'll talk!"
Lt Col Gulzar told The Daily Star that Hanif, who was arrested with Rahman on Thursday in Sylhet, had told them that Amanullah had vital information about Bangla Bhai's whereabouts.
"Oh, he does, does he? Where the hell are my vise grips?"
"Here they are, sir!"
As they found Amanullah's information substantiated those extracted from others, the Rab intelligence wing became certain about Bangla Bhai's wife's location in Mymensingh and probable location of the militant leader in Muktagachha.
"Mookta-gotcha, is it? Mahmoud! Bring the armored car around!"
"We first captured his wife from Mymensingh town. Talking with her, we became sure that Bangla Bhai is staying at Rampur in Muktagachha," said Gulzar.
"Yeah. He's there in Mookta-gotcha! An' when you find him, remind him about the child support!"
Rab had nabbed Amanullah Rimon, 19, hailing from Trishal in Mymensingh, from a house at Srirampur in Sylhet Sadar uapzial at about 3:30am.

MYSTERIOUS HOUSE
It was a dark and stormy night...
One Chan Mia is the owner of the Muktagachha house where Bangla Bhai was staying.
He's a shifty-looking character with a wen in one eye...
Rab officials said Bangla Bhai shifted there immediately after Abdur Rahman's arrest. They said Fahima, Bangla Bhai's wife, had been staying in RK Mission Road house for about three months. The house is a hideout of absconding JMB Shura member Salahuddin.
It was the last place anyone would have thought of looking...
Fahima told interrogators that she did not meet Bangla Bhai for about one month.
"Nah! I ain't laid eyes on the lazy bum! An' me widda baby to take care of!"

THE TYRANNY OF BANGLA BHAI
Bangla Bhai, who used to introduce himself as Azizur Rahman and Omar Ali Litu
... or as Charles D. Sweeney, or as Liam O'Reilly, or as Sven Svensson, and once as Harriet Cudgel...
while conducting militant operations in the northern region in the name of outlaw cleansing, started his activities openly with direct patronage from local administration, police and some ruling party lawmakers and ministers in April 2004.
"We gotta get some law'n'order goin' around these parts!"
"We need a new sheriff!"
"No. We need... Bangla Bhai!"
Bangla Bhai and his men killed 22 people and maimed and tortured over 300 in its vigilante operation in the northern region from April to July 2004. He went into hiding on May 23, a week after the government ordered his arrest. But he continued to lead his militant organisation from his house hideouts. Although newspapers published series of reports on JMJB killing and torture, the government denied the reports and blamed newspapers for 'creating a fictitious character'. National and international human rights bodies strongly decried the government inertia in taking action against Bangla Bhai and other JMJB leaders. Even the government top brass denied the existence of Bangla Bhai. Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer and Industries Minister Matiur Rahman Nizami accused newspapers of having links with Bangla Bhai, questioning how could newspapers publish his exclusive interviews without having any relations with him.

CROWDS REJOICE
As the information of Bangla Bhai's capture spread, hundreds of people from nearby villages rushed to Rampur. The cheerful crowd stood on the rooftops of houses, trees and both sides of the road as the militant leader was being taken away from the spot. In Mymensingh town, hundreds of people came out of their houses, offices and shops to have a glimpse of notorious criminal Bangla Bhai and kept on clapping as the Rab men were taking him to the MMCH in a motorcade. Defying law enforcers' barricade, curious people forced into the MMCH when Bangla Bhai and his bodyguard were taken to the hospital. Rab men, reporters, photographers and cameramen of local and national newspapers and electronic media even entered the operating theatre.
"Here, you! Get that camera out of here! And your cat, too!"
Sure wish I had the goats-n-sweetmeats concession in that upazilla...

Posted by: Fred 2006-03-07
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=144675