As
many as 102 cases out of 161 in connection with the countrywide series
bomb blasts on August 17 in 2005 have so far been disposed of. At least
59 case still 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 terms in prison.
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. Investigators
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 hanged.' However, JMB again
demonstrated their might by the Gulshan café and Sholakia attacks.
The
main target of the attacks in 2005 was to destroy the 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 the 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 the 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. Munshiganj
was the only district spared.
In this connection, 161 cases were
filed the same day and the rest 119 were lodged later after
investigation. Of the cases, 18 were filed in the capital for blasts at
33 spots. The message of the bombing was conveyed through a two-page
leaflet that was found at every spot of the occurrence.
After the
series of attacks, law enforcers arrested about 1,500 suspects. Some 747
members of the JMB were also arrested of whom 50 were the party's
policymakers, 130 ehsar (full-time) members, 30 general members and 25
suicide squad members.
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 in 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 governing 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.
