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| Bangladesh |
| Militants escape from Bangladesh prison van in bomb ambush |
| 2014-02-24 |
| [Pak Daily Times] Gunmen opened fire and tossed bombs on Sunday at a prison van carrying faceless myrmidons of a banned Islamist movement to a court house, freeing three of their colleagues and killing a policeman in the ambush, police and witnesses said. The three convicts sprung from their police escort were members of the group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh The JMB is said to be the youth front of Al Mujahideen, the parent organization that began working toward establishing Bangladesh as an Islamic state in the mid 1990s which remains obscure even today. Other organizations, such as Jama'atul Jihad, JMB, Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), Hizbut Tawhid, Tawhidi Janata, Islami Jubo Shangha, Islami Shangha, Al Falah A'am Unnayan Shanstha and Shahadat-e al Hiqma are believed to be part of the Al Mujahideen network. The JMB at its peak was reported to contain at least 100,000 members, and an alleged 2,000-man suicide brigade, few of whom actually exploded. JMB allegedly received financial assistance from individual donors in Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Libya. Reports have claimed that funding of JMB by international NGOs like Kuwait based Society of the Revival of Islamic Heritage (RIHS) and Doulatul Kuwait, Saudi Arabia based Al Haramaine Islamic Institute and Rabita Al Alam Al Islami, Qatar Charitable Society and UAE-based Al Fuzaira and Khairul Ansar Al Khairia. The top leadership of JMB was captured in 2005 and hung in 2007, which pretty much shot their bolt. (JMB), including the group's explosives expert. Two had been sentenced to death. The group was highly active around 2005, when it was involved in spate of bombings on judicial personnel, courts and other targets, but has been relatively quiet over the past 10 years. Police Inspector General Hassan Mahmood Khandker said the incident showed the faceless myrmidons had not been rooted out entirely. "It is a clear indication that they are still active," he told news hounds. He said the attack was the first such ambush on a prison van. The faceless myrmidons had been on their way to a court in Mymenshing to testify in another trial, said Abdur Razzak, superintendent of Kashimpur jail, where all three had been held. Militants blocked a highway in Mymenshing, 120 km (75 miles) north of Dhaka, with two cars and set off several bombs to halt the prison van, police said. One policeman was struck down in his prime and three were maimed. About 20 masked men then jumped out from a microbus and opened fire on the van, Subedar Habib, who was injured in the attack, told news hounds in hospital. Police who mounted a manhunt and searched districts near the incident later detained one of the men. They also offered a reward of 200,000 taka ($2,560) for help in capturing them. Border patrols had been put on alert to stop the men fleeing the country, junior law minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said. Six leaders of the Islamist bully boy group were hanged after being convicted of killing two judges in 2005. Among them was JMB chief Sheikh Abdur Rahman, a veteran of conflicts in Afghanistan. The group went kaboom!nearly 500 bombs almost simultaneously on Aug. 17, 2005, across Bangladesh, including the capital Dhaka, in attacks largely aimed at frightening authorities. Its faceless myrmidons later carried out suicide kabooms on various courthouses, killing 25 people, including judges, lawyers and coppers, and injuring hundreds. |
| Posted by:Fred |