Many accused freed from jail, return to militancy

Many of the militants held for their involvement in the countrywide series bomb blasts on August 17 in 2005 and subsequently released from jail have returned to militancy.
As many as 102 cases out of 161 in connection with the series bomb blasts have so far been disposed of.
Many of the cases are under prosecution. In the cases, different courts sentenced at least 15 people to death while 118 were given life term and 247 others to various prison terms.
The banned outfit Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) carried out the attacks in 511 places of 63 out of the total 64 districts only to show their power. Investigator said that although their activities were now off and on, "they no more have the capacity like they had in the past as almost all of their leaders have been arrested and many of them were hanged."
According to jail sources around 750 militants are in 68 jails across the country and 41 of      them are on death rows.
Today is the 13th anniversary of the series bomb blast. Banned JMB on this day in 2005 carried out an orchestrated attack and exploded 459 bombs in 63 districts in just half an hour.
Following the attack, 159 cases were filed and investigators pressed charges in 149 of them accusing 1,106 militants. Final reports were placed in the rest 10 cases, said according to the Police Headquarters.
Verdicts in 93 cases have been delivered in which 334 JMB leaders and activists were convicted and 349 acquitted. Many of the 349 acquitted were arrested later on and kept with the JMB militants in jails, said an official wishing not to be named.
The main target of the attacks was to destroy existing judicial, administrative and legal systems, democratic process and institutions as the JMB was out to establish Islamic Shariah law in Bangladesh.
Reports say the grassroots-level perpetrators are still active to reorganise the battered outfit in one way or other. The JMB was floated in 1998 but it came into spotlight in 2003. It was banned in February 2005.
The BNP-Jamaat-led four-party alliance government was in power when the members of banned outfit JMB carried out the attacks in 511 places of 63 out of the total 64 districts, leaving two people killed and 200 others injured. Munsiganj was the only district spared.
Excepting the two top leaders - Shayakh Abdur Rahman and Siddiqul Islam, commonly known as Bangla Bhai - the authorities are yet to punish the field-level executors of the serial blasts that portrayed the secular country as a "new breeding ground of Islamic militancy" globally, harming its economic potentiality.
However, Khaleda Zia's government finally arrested JMB ring leaders Shayakh Abdur Rahman and Bangla Bhai who were patronised allegedly by at least three ministers of the then BNP government. The military-led interim government on March 29, 2007 six JMB men including the duo as the court handed down capital punishment, destroying the JMB network.
Trying the radicals was one of the election promises of the ruling Awami League that came to power in January 2009. The then BNP-Jamaat government, which had repeatedly trashed media reports on to concede the presence of Islamic extremists, later confessed the existence of Islamic militants promising actions against them.