A Bangladesh court on Wednesday acquitted all 23 accused in a bomb attack that killed 10 people in the country’s southwest seven years ago and ordered the case be re-investigated, court officials said. The bomb went off during an open-air music concert in the town of Jessore, 300 kilometres from Dhaka, on March 6, 1999. “The accused have been acquitted as police failed to produce any clear evidence against them,” a court official quoted judge M Abul Hossen Bepari as saying. Bepari questioned the charges filed against the accused, saying recently detained Islamist militants had claimed involvement in the attack. “Police should re-investigate the case and file charges afresh against the real culprits with enough evidence to substantiate the charges,” a defence lawyer quoted the judge as saying.
Security officials said detained Islamist militants including Shayek Abdur Rahman, chief of the outlawed Jamaatul Mujahideen group, and Siddikul Islam Bangla Bhai, leader of another outlawed group Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, confessed during police interrogation to involvement in the concert bombing. The two Islamist groups want to turn Muslim dominated Bangladesh into a sharia-based Islamic country. In May, a court sentenced Shayek and Bangla Bhai along with five others to death by hanging for their involvement in killing two judges late last year.