Attacks on Cops: 2 ‘Neo JMB’ men held in city
Counterterrorism officials yesterday claimed to have arrested two “Neo JMB” operatives for their alleged involvement in recent attacks on police in Gulistan and Science Lab areas in Dhaka.
Mehedi Hasan Tamim, 25, and his friend Abdullah Azmir, 26, were arrested in Mohammadpur area on Sunday night. They were members of this “Neo JMB” group’s military wing, said police.
Tamim was present at the time of both attacks while Azmir was planning and making improvised explosive devices or IEDs, said Monirul Islam, chief of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) Unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police.
“They targeted police to draw the attention of global terror outfit Islamic State and set up communication,” he told the press at DMP Media Centre yesterday.
On April 29, two traffic police constables and a community traffic policeman were injured in an IED blast in Gulistan while two policemen were injured in a similar attack at Science Lab intersection on August 31.
Besides, on May 26, two people, including a female police officer, suffered injuries when a bomb went off near a police pickup in Malibagh intersection area. On July 24, IEDs were recovered from near police boxes in Paltan and Khamarbari areas.
Police suspected that the arrestees were also connected to these three incidents.
Monirul Islam said this group planned a similar attack on police in September but police foiled it by raiding a Narayanganj den and arresting two members on September 23.
The arrestees were Farid Uddin Rumee, 27, a teacher of mechanical and production engineering at Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology in Dhaka, and Mishuk Khan Mizan, 24, a final-year engineering student of Narayanganj Polytechnic Institute.
Rumee’s younger brother Rafiq, 25, who formed the five-member military wing of the group, is on the run.
CTTC officials said Azmir was among the four youths seen in the so-called IS footage circulated recently. The video was actually captured in the Narayanganj den and three of the youths except for Rafiq were detained.
According to CTTC officials, Rafiq, Tamim and Azmir were friends and graduated in mechanical engineering from Khulna University of Engineering and Technology (Kuet) in 2014. They were radicalised online during university study.
Initially, they used to write for the blogs of banned outfit Ansar al Islam. But soon they assumed IS ideology, believing it to be better and more effective.
Instead of blog writing they decided to carry out attacks and left homes in 2018. Some of them took training in a remote area of Azmir’s hometown in Bhola.
This “Neo JMB” group has also prepared a bomb making manual in Bangla and posted it on different websites to encourage others, the officials said.
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