Two Ansarullah men held in Dhaka

Detective Branch and Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime Unit jointly arrested 2 suspected members of banned militant outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team from Kamrangirchar area of Dhaka on Monday. They have been identified as Sayed Mohammad Mojahidul Islam, a student of KUET, and Ariful Islam Solaymani alias Arafat, a student of Chittagong Islami University. Both of them are responsible of recruiting and inviting new members into ABT and collect finances for their operation, sources said. Confirming at a press briefing, CT unit head Additional Commissioner Monirul Islam said acting on a tip-off, DB and CT jointly conducted a drive at Kamrangirchar that led to the arrests, and recovered some books on militancy and 2 machetes. Monirul Islam also said that the motives of these militants and that of the recently arrested BNP Joint Secretary General Aslam Chowdhury are similar. He said Aslam had met with a Mossad agent and that they are connected to the recent attacks on the minority communities. The militants are responsible for the direct killings. So there are many similarities between them, Monirul added. Some murder cases in North Bengal have been found the involvement of Chhatra Shibir. So there are similarities between their political and militant ideologies, he added. Replying to a question, Monirul said that upon interrogation, they found some information about some financiers of their operations. Replying to another query if the deaths of militants in the crossfire affected investigation, Monirul said that it was never their intention, and that they had always wanted to bring them in alive. But sometimes, in acts of self-defense, such things happened. Had they been caught alive, it may have yielded more information, but their deaths do not deter investigation much, based on information and tips from other sources, he added.