The Home Ministry recently alerted the law enforcement agencies that there are concerns that Jama'at ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) has "hit squads" trained to create anarchy ahead of the national elections in December. The banned militant organisation, JMB, is trying to mobilize several units of a small number of "hit-men." JMB's actual cadre strength is not known.
Salauddin Ahmed alias Salauddin Salehin chief of JMB is forming several such units and is trying to regroup them under the banner of the radical militant organisation. On February 26 in 2014, three senior leaders of the JMB, Salahuddin Salehin being one of them, were snatched from a prison van by killing a police officer at Trishal in Mymensingh. Mohammed Jahidul Islam, better known as Boma Mizan, second in command of JMB, and close associate of Salehin, has been arrested by Indian police on August 7 for his involvement in the Bihar's Bodh Gaya explosion. Many of these leaders are carrying out the outfit's organizational activities from India.
The police headquarters has information on that and also believes Salehin is leading the organisation. Law enforcement agencies say since the Gulshan attack they have broken the outfit's high command by arresting most of the leaders and active organisers. Many militants including the group's military commander Tamim Chowdhury were killed in several raids in Dhaka and its surrounding areas. At least 60 anti-militancy operations were carried out since the 2016 Holey Artisan terror attack in the capital. However, the remaining militants may be trying to regroup in a small scale and planning to create anarchy ahead of the national elections.
The police headquarters has already stepped up monitoring and taken preventive steps to thwart the "regrouping" attempts by the radical groups, sources said. "The militants are planning to kill popular, progressive and secular Awami League leaders, progressive writers, thinkers and bloggers, foreigners working in development projects and members of the minority communities," states the Home Ministry letter. The letter issued in the first week of May this year also mentioned that so-called jihadists from Bangladesh, now fighting in Syria and its adjacent territories, have close links to these activities and their plots.
A counterterrorism official said they got intelligence report that the militant groups are trying to regroup and form a single platform but they are yet to get any concrete evidence in this regard. Investigators initially thought that two militant organisations -- mainstream JMB and pro-al Qaeda Ansar al Islam -- jointly murdered Bachchu, a blogger in Munshiganj. Finally, they came to know that it was an act of the JMB alone. A prime suspect in the murder, Abdur Rahman -- the military wing commander of JMB's Dhaka division -- was killed in a shootout with police several days after he was arrested on June 24.
Bangladeshi law enforcement agencies identified 8,096 JMB members, of whom 2,000 were allegedly part of the group's "suicide squad." Authorities had arrested more than 1,500 JMB members, along with a few top leaders. Based on this assessment, there could still be thousands of JMB members in operation. The JMB allegedly have been operating under the instruction of ISI to create anarchy ahead of the national elections, sources added.
