DHAKA, 3 October 2005 — Bangladesh security forces arrested the alleged leader of a militant group yesterday, sources said. Mufti Abdul Hannan, leader of the Bangladesh chapter of the militant group Harkatul Jihad, was nabbed at a hide-out in Dhaka.
Hannan had been in hiding since July 2000 after police found a powerful bomb, believed planted by Harkatul Jihad activists, near a rally that former Prime Minister Hasina Wajed addressed in western Kotalipara area. Police recovered the remote-controlled bomb before it could be detonated and Hasina was not hurt.
Investigators are questioning Hannan, intelligence official said. Hannan — a fugitive earlier sentenced in absentia to life in prison for possessing illegal weapons — was arrested by members of an elite anti-crime force, said Lt. Col. Gulzaruddin Ahmed, director of the force’s intelligence wing.
Hannan’s wife and four children were also arrested at a rented home in Dhaka, Ahmed said, adding that the family members were later freed.
Police told reporters that Hannan, Harkatul’s operation commander in Bangladesh, was among the country’s “top terrorists” they had been looking for years.
Yesterday, interrogators were trying to determine if Hannan was linked to a wave of more than 400 bomb blasts that killed two people and injured 125 people across Bangladesh within an hour on Aug. 17. The bombs were small and apparently homemade.
No one claimed the responsibility for the bombings, but leaflets from the banned Islamic group Jamatul Mujahedeen were found at all the blast sites.
The group wants to establish harsh Islamic laws in the Muslim-majority Bangladesh, which is governed by secular laws.
Authorities have arrested nearly 400 suspects, many of them suspected members of the banned group.
Police yesterday said they had intensified a search for the supreme leaders of the two groups, Sheikh Abdur Rahman and Bangla Bhai, who have been hiding since Aug. 17.
Police have said Hannan is the prime suspect in the plot to assassinate Hasina in July 2000, when a large bomb was planted where Hasina was scheduled to address a rally.
Media reports claimed Hannan had studied in an Islamic school in Pakistan in the early 1980s, then slipped into neighboring India where he studied in another such school for six years.
He also reportedly had military training in Pakistan, then went to Afghanistan to fight against then-Soviet occupation.
A Dhaka court yesterday was expected to rule that officials could keep Hannan in custody for more questioning, a Dhaka metropolitan police official said.
