As many as 102 cases out of 161 in connection with countrywide series bomb blasts on August 17 in 2005 have so far been disposed of. At least 59 cases are 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 prison terms.
Gulshan cafe attack that left 20 hostages dead, including 17 foreigners, was the deadliest attack in the history of the country.
The banned outfit Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) carried out attacks in 511 places of 63 out of 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 showed their power after Gulshan café and Sholakia attacks, the Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) now became Neo-JMB.
The main target of the attacks 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 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 Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) carried out the attacks in 511 places of 63 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 for 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 executed 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.
