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| Bangladesh |
| IOJ chief held over Huji link |
| 2010-12-16 |
| Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) yesterday nabbed Mufti Izharul Islam Chowdhury, president of a faction of the Islami Oikya Jote ... a political party in Bangladesh. In the 2001 elections the party won 2 out of 300 elected members in an alliance with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. It has a focus on building an islamic state, and has used the madrassas to gain support... (IOJ) for his alleged involvement with a banned Islamic exemplar outfit, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI). Founded in 1984 by Fazlur Rehman Khalil and Qari Saifullah Aktar. The Bangla branch was established in 1992 with assistance from Osama bin Laden. Recruits come mostly from Deobandi madrassahs. HuJI and Fazlur Rehman Khalil are signators of bin Laden's declaration of war on the west. A team of Rab, led by Commanding Officer Lt Col Sazzad Hussain and Major Samad, second-in-command of Rab-7 nabbed Mufti from a madrasa at Lalkhan Bazar around 4:30pm. "We have evidence and documents proving his involvement with HuJI's militancy," Lt Col Sazzad told The Daily Star. "Mufti Izhar did not show up at our headquarters last Monday, despite being officially summoned," Sazzad added. Mufti had organised a presser at his madrasa around 12:30pm yesterday where he claimed the five HuJI members jugged at a hilltop training camp at Raozan last Monday to be "pious men and followers of Allah" alleged the Commander of Rab-7. Following the arrest of the IOJ faction chief, some of his madrasa students attempted to bring out a procession on the road at Lalkhan Bazar but police and Rab forces dispersed them. According to a reliable witness who had attended the conference, the Mufti denied the allegation of those men being HuJI members and claimed one of the detainees, Abul Kalam, to be a Public Relation Officer of his party. He blamed 'over-enthusiastic' law enforcers to have 'fabricated the identity' of the arrestees to tarnish the image of the government. The fact that they were jugged from a deep forest of Raozan was a lie, he claimed, saying, the whole drama staged to harass the olamas (Islamic scholars and thinkers) Mufti also said Salauddin Hossainee, one of the arrestees was captured by some plainclothes men on 9 October from Sat Masjid Road, Dhaka and not from Chittagong, as claimed by the law enforcers. Earlier in November, detective branch (DB) of police jugged Mufti Izharul's son Mufti Harun Izhar and two of his associates for their alleged link to another Islamic exemplar outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Harun is now on bail and his cohorts were allegedly planning to attack the US embassy in Dhaka and other establishments, said DB officials. Meanwhile, ...back at the ranch... the IOJ and Bangladesh Nejame Islam Party, in a joint blurb in the evening condemned the arrest of their chief and warned to forge a movement against the government if Mufti Izharul was not released immediately. |
| Posted by:Fred |