Caught red-handed were Shibir men

In two more incidents in Rajshahi and Chittagong yesterday, three activists of Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, were caught red-handed while they were fleeing after hurling crude bombs at police.

In the last 10 ten days, at least 16 Shibir men were caught by law enforcers and common people before or after they carried out bomb or arson attacks on police or public transports. A few of them were arrested from their dens with large haul of explosive materials.

Besides, on January 14, a Shibir activist was crushed to death by a truck when fleeing the scene of an arson attack in Chittagong. On January 28, another Shibir man, who suffered injuries while allegedly trying to explode a crude bomb at Kadamtoli in Chittagong, died.

The three arrested yesterday are Saiful Islam Selim, 35, and Nawshad Ali, 19, in Rajshahi, and Ekramul Huq Sumon, 23, in Chittagong.

Saiful and Nawshad were arrested from in front of Lokhnath High School in the city when a group of masked Shibir men were fleeing having thrown a crude bomb at police, said Ifte Khair Alam, an assistant commissioner of Rajshahi Metropolitan Police.

Ekramul was arrested from near the Didar Market area of Chandanpura in the port city. As police, upon secret information, chased a large group of Shibir activists who allegedly were planning subversive activities, the group hurled two crude bombs at police. Ekramul was caught on the spot but others managed to flee the scene, said Mohiuddin Selim, officer in charge of Kotwali Police Station.

Police later raided the Darul Ulum Aliya Madrasha as most of the attackers ran inside it and picked up 34 more people. They also seized explosive materials weighing around 2 kgs, he added.

On January 28, locals handed over to police two Shibir activists after they were caught trying to attack a vehicle at Kashipur Bilbabari in Barisal city.

On January 24, locals caught and beat up a Shibir leader and his two associates when they were attempting to hurl petrol bombs on a passenger bus on the Dhaka-Narayanganj road. They later handed them over to police.

Shihabuddin Shihab, general secretary of Fatullah Shibir unit, later confessed his involvement in the incident.

On January 23, an angry mob beat up two Shibir cadres in Rajshahi's Poba upazila after they torched a passenger bus, and handed them over to police.

On January 21, police arrested the Shibir president of Keshabpur upazila in Jessore with a petrol bomb and some explosive materials.

On the same day, law enforcers arrested five leaders and activists of Shibir and seized 130 crude bombs, two litres of petrol, one kilogramme of gunpowder, and other bomb-making materials from a building in the capital.

“It was a bomb factory. The Shibir men used to supply bombs across the capital from there,” a police official said on that day.

Shibir's track record in waging large-scale, deadly violence is proven. Throughout 2013, Shibir hogged the headlines by beating up policemen, torching public vehicles and properties and killing people, exploding bombs, felling trees on roads and uprooting railway tracks.

Their violence continued in the first quarter of 2014 as well, especially following the January 5 parliamentary election. In addition, they allegedly ran online smear campaigns against the war crimes trials and instigated religious violence.

Their violent activities were reflected in the IHS Jane's Global Terrorism & Insurgency Attack Index 2013 which said Shibir was the third most active non-state armed group in the year, just behind Barisan Revolusi Nasional of Thailand and the Taliban.