The United States said it had designated a Bangladeshi group, Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami, as a “terrorist” organisation, subjecting it to US financial sanctions. Bangladesh accuses the group of involvement in a grenade attack on a political rally in 2004 in which 23 people were killed. A statement posted on the US State Department website said the group’s leader had signed a 1998 fatwa sponsored by Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden that “declared American civilians to be legitimate targets for attack”.
“Since then, HUJI-B has been implicated in a number of terrorist attacks in Bangladesh and abroad,” it said. The statement said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday named Harkat as a “Foreign Terrorist Organisation and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist”.
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