The Bangladesh guerrilla group (JMB), responsible for some 400 blasts nationwide on a single day in 2005, has been effectively crushed, officials say. This is from Iran Press TV. They seem to have just picked up on the fact. If they'd been reading Rantburg all along they'd have known it.
Authorities say since August 17, 2005, the government has cracked down on the Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) after they carried out serial blasts throughout the nation, on one single day killing 28 people and injuring scores of others. The security force launched the crackdown following criticism that Dhaka was turning a blind eye to growing extremism.
Turned out certain members of the government had been in cahoots with them, since they had the same Islamic goals...
According to Hasan Mahmud Khandaker, security head of Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion, the government is confident that this terrorist group can pose no more threats as at least 1,000 of its members have been arrested.
I'd guess 900 of them are dupes, pawns, cannon fodder, and innocent bystanders. The actual organization was pretty much a clan affair.
He added that they have successfully dealt with.
And there's the secret to dismantling a terror organization: Hang all the ones you don't shoot.
Over the last two years bomb attacks have become a rarity. The disintegration of JMB though not yet complete, has seen the group "very much under control", Khandaker said after a Bengali-language newspaper Prothom Alo warned the JMG was regrouping. The large-scale arrests of JMB guerrillas have blunted its influence. Rebel leader Sheikh Abdur Rahman and his deputy Siddiqul Islam Bangla Bhai are in state custody, while six senior rebels were executed last year after a court sentenced them to death for killing two judges, AFP quoted Khandaker as saying.
That's the first we've heard of Abdur Rahman and Bangla Bhai still being alive. Supposedly they had their necks stretched on March 29th of last year.