A veteran of Afghan war
Afghan war veteran, Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh Majlish-e-Shura member, and death row inmate Mohammad Rakib Hasan Russell alias Hafez Mahmud was waiting for his execution for the murder of Joseph Gani Gomez Mandal, a medicine trader of Melandah in Jamalpur.
Gomez, a converted Christian of Duanipara village of Sadar upazila in Jamalpur, was killed at Hazipur Bazaar on the night of September 18, 2004.
Rakib, whose escape did not go as per his plan yesterday, had been JMB's Khulna division commander. He was arrested near Baitul Mukarram Mosque in Dhaka on February 28, 2006.
He and another Shura member Salauddin had threatened with life the judge who sentenced them to death for the murder.
The High Court on January 15, 2013, upheld the death sentence of the two leaders of banned Islamist outfit in the Gomez murder case.
The Speedy Trial Tribunal in Khulna sentenced him to life imprisonment in another case filed in connection with a bomb blast in Kushtia Islamic University on August 17, 2005.
A Dhaka court also sentenced Rakib to 54 years' of rigorous imprisonment for possessing illegal firearms, explosives and ammunition.
Rakib from Bangshi Beltoli village of Melandah upazila in Jamalpur passed Dakhil from a madrasa in Melandah and later studied in Mohammadia Arabia Jatrabari Qawmi Madrasa.
Rakib, who can speak Arabic and Urdu, had dissociated himself from Jamaat after the party had joined a government led by BNP chief Khaleda Zia in 2001.
A private TV channel a few years ago had aired footage of 2003 where Rakib says he had been involved in Shibir before joining JMB. "As I was not a student, I could not work directly with Shibir. But I worked for a Jamaat candidate in 2001 election," he said in the clip.
Acting on intelligence information and Rakib's confession, Rab in March 2006, cordoned off the JMB chief Abdur Rahman's house in East Shaplabagh in Sylhet, which led to the kingpin's arrest.
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