‘Wolfpack leader’ of Ansar Al Islam arrested by CTTC
The Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit of police yesterday claimed to have arrested the leader of the "wolfpack" of militant outfit Ansar Al Islam, that plotted to kill filmmaker Khijir Hayat Khan.
The arrestee was identified as Nazmul Hasan alias Osman Gani. A team of CTTC unit arrested Nazmul in front of a hotel in the capital's Paltan on Monday night, Saiful Islam, deputy commissioner of CTTC unit, told The Daily Star yesterday.
Nazmul was later placed in front of a Dhaka court yesterday with a 10-day remand, and court granted two days' remand after hearing.
Nazmul created a group on messaging app Telegram in 2018 for the wolfpack members, and communicated with each other to plan the murder, as they believed the film "Mr Bangladesh" -- written jointly by Khijir Hayat Khan and Hasnat Piash, and starring Khijir -- goes against their ideology and "jihad" in Islam, according to CTTC officials.
The film, directed by Abu Akhter Ul Iman, hit movie theatres nationwide on November 16 last year.
CTTC officials, however, managed to foil their murder plot and arrested two members of the group in 2018. Later, police beefed up the security for Khijir Hayat and launched a drive to arrest another member of the group, they said.
Nazmul was in Kuwait at the time of creating the group, but recently came back to Bangladesh and was planning subversive activities again, said police.
"We have managed to arrest nine members of the wolfpack over the last two years. It takes times, as some of them were found staying in France, Kuwait and Dubai," said DC Saiful.
Saiful said that they have gleaned some more names of the group from Nazmul, and were trying to arrest them by tracing their location.
"Nazmul used to collect funds through cryptocurrency for jihad. We have also got some social media accounts details of top bosses of the outfit from Nazmul and their mode of operation," said DC Saiful.
"We would try to get details of these IDs by interrogating Nazmul in remand," he added.
Comments