DHAKA, 27 June 2005 — A Bangladeshi national, Hasanuz Zaman, has been arrested for sending e-mails to the Dutch and Japanese embassies threatening to blow up the missions, officials said yesterday.
Zaman was also accused of sending similar threats via e-mail to the headquarters of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite security force formed to check terrorism, drug trafficking and arms smuggling.
Zaman threatened a bomb attack on the RAB headquarters if an alleged terror group leader in the custody of the special force was not released, officials said.
The RAB was holding the leader, identified only as Arman and reportedly an underworld don, for questioning, sources said.
Zaman, 25, confessed to dispatching the e-mails but insisted that these were meant to be a joke. Police arrested him some 24 hours after the e-mails containing threats were received.
Interrogators were trying to be certain as to whether the e-mails carrying the threats were a hoax.
Meanwhile, security was further strengthened at the Dutch and Japanese embassies, sources said.
Meanwhile, a blaze triggered by a blowout at Tengratila gas field raged for a third day yesterday, with flames soaring up to 200 feet and forcing hundreds of families in nearby villages to flee their homes.
It marked the second blowout this year at the gas field, in northeastern Sunamganj district, 400 km from Dhaka.
