The fatal attack at Hussaini Dalan with handmade grenades on October 24 that to date has killed two people who joined the traditional Tazia procession of the Shia Muslims was the first such mass targeted terrorist operation by militants since 2005.
Upon preliminary investigation, the law enforcers said that Jamaat-e-Islami’s radical student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir was behind the attack, that was meant to destabilise the country’s law and order ahead of the execution of top Jamaat leader Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid.
On December 8, 2005, at least eight people were killed and 40 others injured when the members of banned militant outfit Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) launched suicide bomb attacks on the offices of cultural organisations Udichi and Shata Dal Shilpi Goshthi in Netrakona town.
Since then, the militant groups, who aim at establishing Islamic rule in the country, did not carry out any organised mass attack until the one at Hussaini Dalan.
Of course, the targeted killing of individuals – mainly secular writers and Islamic scholars – did not stop. At least a dozen secularists and war crimes trial activists, and 13 religious scholars were killed and many other injured in attacks by radical Islamists during this period.
2005 was the most eventful year until now for terror. That year, the militant groups carried out five attacks, killing at least 25 people and injuring scores of others.
On January 5, 2005, former finance minister Shah AMS Kibria and four other Awami League leaders and activists were killed and over 70 others injured when militants linked to Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami Bangladesh (HujiB) launched a grenade attack. Kibria was returning to Dhaka after addressing a rally in Habiganj’s Baidyerbazar.
HujiB was declared outlawed on October 17 the same year.
Then BNP-Jamaat government, which had repeatedly denied the existence of militant groups in the country, eventually banned JMB and its wing Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) on February 23, 2005. Reports say another BNP ally Islami Oikya Jote also aided the militants during 2001-2006.
Before that, according to media reports, JMJB chief Bangla Bhai and his men killed at least 24 people and tortured some 300 others in Rajshahi region between April 2004 and January 2005.
Six months after the ban was enforced, the JMB on August 17, 2005 carried out simultaneous blasts at 511 places in 63 districts, killing two persons and injuring many others in an apparent show of strength.
The JMB men carried out three more organised attacks only two months later.
On November 14, a JMB suicide squad member blasted bombs on the Jhalakathi court premises, killing senior assistant judges Sohel Ahmed Chowdhury and Jagannath Paare.
Only two weeks later, another JMB suicide bomber killed eight people – four lawyers and four clients – at the Gazipur Bar Association office on November 29.
The last militant attack of 2005 was fatal. Eight people were killed when JMB men blasted bombs at the offices of Udichi and Shata Dal Shilpi Goshthi in Netrakona town.
Arrests
Amid the repeated incidents of blasts, the law enforcers on September 7, 2005 arrested JMB chief Saidur Rahman’s son AKM Shamim. Now in jail, Saidur is a former Jamaat leader from Habiganj. HujiB’s operational chief Mufti Hannan was arrested on October 1.
Police’s elite force Rapid Action Battalion on November 27 arrested Bangla Bhai’s second-in-command Mahtab Khamaru. But he was released after then premier’s son Tarique Rahman reportedly asked home state minister Lutfozzaman Babar to do so.
Culture of denial
BNP chief and then premier Khaleda Zia in August 2004 said that there was no Bangla Bhai. On March 15 the following year she alleged that militancy was a propaganda hatched by the Awami League, then opposition in parliament.
She softened her stance in November and, admitting the existence of militants, asked the people to stop religious extremism.
Leaders of the BNP and its key ally Jamaat-e-Islami followed Khaleda to claim that there was no existence of militant groups in the country. On June 22, 2004, then industries minister Motiur Rahman Nizami claimed that Bangla Bhai did not exist. On July 22, he blamed the newspapers for creating fictional character Bangla Bhai.
The Jamaat chief also blamed the then opposition Awami League for spreading propaganda on the existence of militancy.
However, after the massive attacks of 2005, the government was forced to arrest top leaders of JMB and JMJB in March 2006, while the subsequent government executed six of them including Shyakh Abdur Rahman and Bangla Bhai a year later in a case filed for killing the two Jhalakathi judges.
A number of BNP ministers and lawmakers were sued by the subsequent caretaker government for patronising JMB and JMJB. They are now serving different jail terms in the cases.
Previous attacks
Media reports suggest that Bangla Bhai and his men had killed at least 24 people – mostly Awami League and communists – in the Rajshahi region from April 2004 to January 2005 under the patronisation of some influential BNP leaders.
Year 2004 too saw some gruesome militant attacks.
At least 24 people were killed and several hundred others injured when the HujiB militants launched a grenade attack on an anti-terrorism rally of the Awami League at Bangabandhu Avenue on August 21, 2004. Khaleda’s son is accused of masterminding the attack to kill then opposition leader Sheikh Hasina.
On May 21, HujiB militants carried out another grenade attack at the Shahjalal Shrine in Sylhet city during the visit of then UK high commissioner Anwar Choudhury. Three people were killed in the attack while Anwar narrowly escaped death.
The notorious JMB men were responsible for the bomb blasts at four cinema halls in Mymensingh town on December 7, 2002 that killed at least 17 people.
Radical HujiB conducted three other planned attacks between 1999 and 2001.
They planted bombs at Ramna Batamul to foil the Bangla New Year celebrations in 2001. Ten people were killed in that incident. At the court, HujiB claimed that they had carried out the attack since Pohela Boishakh was anti-Islamic.
On January 20, 2001, HujiB men blasted bombs at a meeting of the Communist Party of Bangladesh killing five activists of the party.
The first terror attack of the country was perpetrated in 1999 by HujiB, which started its operations in Bangladesh in 1992. At least 10 people were killed in bomb blasts during Udichi’s cultural programme in Jessore on March 6 that year.
