A radical Islamic group has threatened to kill Indian cricketers when they tour Bangladesh from tomorrow, the Indian High Commission (embassy) said yesterday. "We received a hand-written fax letter on Thursday from a group called Harkat-ul-Zihad, saying that Indian cricketers will be killed if they visit Bangladesh," said a spokesman.
| That's cuz beating a Bangla team would be un-Islamic... |
Bangladeshi authorities suspect the locally-based group was behind an assassination bid on leading secular poet Shamsur Rahman here in 1998. "In revenge for the killing of 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat, we are going to kill Indian cricketers if they visit Bangladesh," Chowdhury quoted the letter as saying. The threat letter also drew a parallel with the Palestinian Black September attack which left 11 Israeli athletes dead at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
| And their attackers dead over the next year or two... |
The Indian cricket board delayed the team's departure by a day and the high commission said a security team would arrive in Bangladesh today to assess the situation. Bangladesh has promised to take high-level security measures, the spokesman said. |