Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (Huji), the country’s first openly-emerged Islamist militant outfit, sometimes carried out terror attacks as per their own jihad (to establish self-interpreted Islamic rule) agenda and sometimes were used as a mercenary force.
Groups belonging to secular spirits in political and socio-cultural arenas had always been Huji’s target since its emergence through an open declaration of its jihad agenda at a press conference at the National Press Club in early 1992.
The bomb attack on Chhayanaut’s Bangla New Year celebrations at the Ramna Batamul on April 14, 2001 (an age-old festivity at the capital’s Ramna Park) was its own agenda, according to the case documents.
Mufti Abdul Hannan, one of the top convicted Huji leaders in this case, said in his judicial statement that they had launched the attack since the programme was “anti-Islamic.”
According to his statement, Huji wanted to stop the arranging of the programme every year by spreading panic among the countrymen.
It was not the first terrorist attack carried out by the Huji B – the Bangladesh chapter of international Islamist terrorist outfit Huji. It was one of many attacks committed by Huji since January 1998.
Since its inception in 1992, during the first regime of the Khaleda Zia-led BNP, Huji was nourished and almost unchallenged for years until the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government started chasing its operatives following the attack on poet Shamsur Rahman.
Later, the extremist outfit carried out several terrorist attacks during 1996-2001 and also during Khaleda’s 2001-06 reign. The incidents include bomb attacks on left cultural organisation Udichi’s programme in Jessore, the Communist Party of Bangladesh’s public meeting in Paltan, an assassination attempt on Hasina in 2000 by a bomb planted in Gopalganj.
During Khaleda’s 2001-06 tenure, Huji was blamed for killing Awami League’s former finance minister Shah AMS Kibria in a grenade attack in Habiganj. They also conducted a grenade attack on British High Commissioner in Dhaka Anwar Choudhury in 2004 at the Shahjalal Shrine in Sylhet.
The case linked with the attack on the UK envoy has been resolved in a trial court in Sylhet where Mufti Hannan was convicted along with some other accused Huji men.
Many other attacks were made by Huji to serve their own agenda.
Huji was used as a mercenary group during the sensational grenade attack on an Awami League rally on August 24, 2004 at Bangabandhu Avenue to assassinate Hasina, then opposition leader in parliament.
According to police investigations and documents of the ongoing trial proceedings, Huji had carried out the grisly attack masterminded by the leaders, ministers and lawmakers of the then ruling BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami.
The meeting of the plotters was held at Hawa Bhaban – then an alternative powerhouse run by Khaleda’s elder son Tarique Rahman who had left Bangladesh in 2008 for London and has not returned since.
Huji was hired to execute the plan to assassinate Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina.
The outlawed group spread its radical network through Qawmi madrasas (unrecognised private Islamic schools). Their leaders set up many Qawmi madrasas across the country to expand the Huji network.
It was reportedly funded by other Islamist militant and terrorist groups abroad, mainly in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Huji also has links with Myanmar’s Rohingya insurgent groups. It has trained many militants to provide them training on arms in many camps – situated in the forest areas of greater Chittagong. They got support from Rohingya insurgent groups to operate those camps, said some sources who were with Huji from 1990s.
Many Bangladeshi Huji organisers and founders had close links with terrorist group al-Qaeda and its former leader Osama bin Laden and present leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Many of them fought for the Talibans in Afghanistan, according to the militants’ documents.
Abdur Rouf, one of the convicted Huji leaders in the Ramna Batamul blast case, was trying to reorganise Huji and other militant groups together from jail, according to police sources.
During the BNP-Jamaat rule from 2001 to 2006, Huji founders tried to form a political party named Islamic Democratic Party. But the Election Commission turned down its application for registration in 2008. It is alleged that a group of the army’s intelligence wing DGFI had helped in IDP’s formation at that time.
Many of the top leaders of Huji were reportedly behind the formation of Islami Oikya Jote, a key ally of the BNP-Jamaat.
Hefazat leader Mufti Izharul Islam Chowdhury, founder of Jamiatul Ulum Al Islamia Madrasa – otherwise known as Lalkhan Bazar Madrasa – played a significant role in spreading the Huji network across the country since the early 1990s with the ultimate goal of launching a jihad.
The Qawmi madrasa in Chittagong, which came under spotlight after an explosion of locally-made hand grenades on its premises last year, has long been known as a Huji den.
The madrasa even trained Huji members in operating arms so they could fight in the battlefield as trained jihadis.
