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Bangladesh | ||||
Police on trail of an Afghan war veteran | ||||
2009-07-26 | ||||
[Bangla Daily Star] The Detective Branch of police has launched a nationwide hunt for Afghan war veteran Moulana Bakhtiar Hossain, who was earlier arrested in 1999 with four others including two foreigners for involvement in a militancy campaign. The search began after detained Indian national and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) organiser Moulana Mansur Ali revealed that Bakhtiar is the founder and principal of Madrasatur Rahman al Arabia in the city's Dakkhin Khan area where he was arrested last week.
Bakhtiar met Mansur, a top-listed terrorist in India, while fighting for Talibans in Afghanistan in the early 90s. He came under watch in 1999 with an intelligence agency probing the activities of Servants of Suffering Humanity International (SSHI), a Dakkhin Khan-based Islamist NGO.
A case was filed against Moulana Bakhtiar for possessing a Pakistani passport. The rest four faced no specific charges and were shown arrested under Section 54 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Later, the intelligence agency that probed SSHI operations submitted a report to the government, exposing how Bakhtiar got freed in exchange for Tk 5 lakh. The agency had records of Bakhtiar's telephone conversation with his father about this whole arrangement with some CID officials. Another arrestee, Saleem, got the president of Al Markajul Islam, an Islamist NGO, to lobby successfully for his release. The intelligence agency report noted that militants will gain strength for CID's failure to prove the charges against the five. Bakhtiar's father Sarder Nuruzzaman yesterday told The Daily Star that Servants of Suffering Humanity closed its activities following the raid on its office in 1999. He also said Bakhtiar was the local coordinator of SSHI, and the South African and the Pakistani were the international coordinators. The NGO had set up 750 Kawmi madrasas in cluster villages across the country. It stopped funding those madrasas following crackdown on the NGO. Bakhtiar went into hiding after DB police arrested Mansur at a house in Saodagarbari of Dakkhin Khan on July 22. Locals said Mansur and his family would live in a room on the first floor for Tk 1,750 a month. Mansur's co-tenant said they used to live a simple life. Few relatives would visit them. Bakhtiar's father and some teachers of the madrasa denied that Bakhtiar has gone into hiding. They however admitted he has not been attending the madrasa since July 22.
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Posted by:Fred |