Banned militant outfit Ansar Al Islam alias Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) are looking forward to implementing more plans to attack ahead of next parliamentary election. The ABT think snatching of their convicted militant members from the court premise as a big achievement and inspiring by this event, they’re preparing next plans.
To implement their next plans, more than hundred members of their Askari (military) branch are prepared. The convicted militants who are in prison keeping continuous communication with the leaders of Askari branch. Recently, they snatched two militants from court premise in part of their planning to show their presence and capabilities. Later on, law-enforcing agency arrested a militant named Mehedi Hasan Omi in a case filed at Kotoali Thana.
Counter Terrorism and Trans-national Crime (CTTC) unit of DMP got the information stated above by interrogating Omi in remand. Now, CTTC is scrutinizing the information in their hand. Besides, it’s trying to get more important information through arranging combined interrogation of 11 militants.
CTTC chief Md Asaduzzaman, based on the information got from the remanded militants, said, “The Askari members of Ansar AL Islam are trying to reunite with a view to execute the planning of more militant attack in the country. They have connection with another banned outfit Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Now CTTC’s main challenge is to arrest them within shor period.”
According to CTTC sources, the incident of snatching two militants is not an excluded event. The militants have been training themselves and aggregating old members. Subsequently, they conveyed the message to the law-enforcing agencies that they’re still active by snatching their convicting members. As they became successful in this plan, they can attempt to do the same thing again, according to the information from remanded militants.
In the interrogation, Omi said their associates will try to become more active as they’ve been successful in recent plan of snatching two members. This ‘success’ has made their associates more organized.
CTTC said its now more alert about each and every militant outfit, not only ABT and working to spoil the evil-planning of the militants. Besides snatching the prisoned members, they’re also planning to spend big amount of money on their bail.
According to CTTC sources, ABT are using online platform to recruit new members, in addition to focusing on the old and trained members. It’s using some ‘encrypted apps’ to communicate with new members and arrange meeting.
Besides the recruitment process, they’re also focusing on financing to run organization activities. They’re collecting money from both local and foreign sources secretly. Inside the country, they collect money through sources both from towns and villages. Besides, ABT has some paid-workers who collect money from different areas of the country and deposit it to the leaders of the organization.
Based on the information received from the arrested militants, the CTTC official said many of the ABT members are now in prison and the situation of the prison are such that the prisoned militants could use cellphones all night if they give some bribes. In this way, they make many plans.
On November 20, police presented two militants before court in a case and they were taking the militants back to prison. On the moment, the two militants, Mainul Hasan Shamim and Abu Siddique Sohel alias Saquib were snatched away from the police by applying pepper spray. Omi is also a suspect in the same case on which the two militants came to be appered on the hearing in the court. He used to be appearing before the court regularly and got the chance to talk to other militants in this way. Besides, he also exchanged messages with the militants who are still free.
CTTC chief Md Asaduzzaman said Mehedi Hasan Omi used to communicate with other militants of banned Ansar AL Islam after getting the bail. Once he was the chief of ‘Dawah’ department of the organization. They held two physicians recently on charge of involvement with militancy. The two physicians continued their secret activity besides examining the patients.
@The report was published on print and online versions of The Bangladesh Pratidin on November 27, 2022 and rewritten in English by Lutful Hoque
