Bangladesh checks on Islamist threat over detainee
Police detained 11 members of the Hizb ut-Tahrir group from northern Rajshahi city on Thursday on suspicion of plotting subversive acts against the country.
“The Hizb ut-Tahrir will storm the city streets and no one will be able to live in peace on the soil of Bangladesh if our leaders and workers are not released in 48 hours,” warned Muhiuddin Ahmed, coordinator of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Bangladesh, at a Ramadan function on Friday.
He said Hizb ut-Tahrir was struggling to establish Islamic Khilafat (Islamic rule) in Bangladesh and in other Muslim countries and make Muslims free from the “evil influence” of the West, especially the United States and Britain.
“We have noted the threat with due importance and are looking into it,” Hasan Mahmud, director of the elite security force Rapid Action Battalion, told Reuters.
The members of the Hizb ut-Tahrir were arrested on Thursday when they were preparing to address a news conference in Rajshahi city 275 km (172 miles) northwest of the capital Dhaka.
They were carrying leaflets calling for Bangladesh to be made into a sharia-based Islamic state, police said.
It was Hizb ut-Tahrir’s first overt movement in Bangladesh, and intelligence official said. The organisation is banned in Pakistan, Tunisia, Libya, Turkey and some Western countries including the United States, although various nations allow it to operate.
Bangladesh, a Muslim majority nation which follows a secular constitution, has been battling hardline Islamist groups which have carried out a campaign of violence across the country.
The leaders of the two biggest Islamist groups, Jammat-ul-Mujahideen and Jagrata Muslim Janata, blamed for a wave of bombings in 2005, were arrested and executed in March 2007.
Police say remnants of the two groups, along with militants from other organisations like the Harkatul Jihad and Hizb ut- Tahrir are regrouping and may launch fresh attacks ahead of a national election planned for December.
Source : www.hurriyet.com