Huji emerged with open declaration

Terrorist organisation Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, Bangladesh (Huji) emerged through an open declaration of its Jihad agenda at a press conference in early 1992. But the then BNP government did not pay heed to the outfit's dramatic appearance.
The Huji got nourished almost unchallenged for years until Hasina-led Awami League (AL) government began chasing the Islamist fanatic group in January 1998 as it made an attack on late poet Shamsur Rahman.
Even after the extremist organisation made an assassination attempt on the then prime minister Sheikh Hasina in 2000, the AL government did not succeed to check its advancement.
A few of nine suspected militants held by Rapid Action Battalion last two days with huge arms and explosives admitted their involvement in another assassination attempt on Hasina on 21 August, 2004.
One of the arrestees said Huji boss Mufti Hannan's men had asked him to keep grenades hurled at the AL chief's rally.
On the other hand, there are several reports that the BNP-Jamaat-led four-party-alliance government patronised the organisation and its leaders.
The alliance government, however, was compelled to take some measures including banning the group and arrest a few leaders in October 2005.
The move came in the wake of pressures from home and abroad to take action against the militant organisation, which investigators also found responsible for perpetrating the August 21 attack on Hasina.
Interestingly, a few days ahead of banning the organisation the then prime minister Khaleda Zia held a meeting with a number of Huji leaders when the militant leaders, posing as Islamic Scholars, paid a call on her at the Prime Minister's Office.
A top Huji leader categorically branded a former BNP minister as his patron to the press after being arrested.
One year into banning, a number of top Huji leaders under a different banner held a public meeting in the capital after getting nod from the government in October 2006.
EMERGENCE
Back on April 30, 1992, the Huji appeared in Bangladesh through a press conference wearing sleeveless olive jackets over their shalwar-kameez.
The militant leaders sat shoulder to shoulder during the press conference at the Jatiya Press Club and boastfully described how they fought in the Afghan war. They demanded that Bangladesh be turned into an Islamic state.
For the first time the group came to light as Huji. A day after the emergence, they paraded through the Dhaka streets after Juma prayers to claim victory over the Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
In 2002, the US blacklisted Huji as an international terrorist organisation. It took the government three more years to ban it on October 17, 2005 after much denial of its existence in Bangladesh.
The US went one step forward to blacklist the Bangladesh chapter of Huji in 2003, but the government's denial continued as the then foreign minister M Morshed Khan said he had not seen "any activity of such organisation in Bangladesh".
Lawmakers of Jamaat-e-Islami who had alleged link with the militants also denied Huji existence in Bangladesh.
Former Jamaat lawmaker Riasat Ali Biswas told parliament on September 11, 2005: "Reports of militant training of Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh [JMB] and Harkatul Jihad to turn Bangladesh into an Islamic state are nothing but propaganda."
Under such lenience and denials, Huji spread its wing in madrasas, set up training camps in the greater Chittagong and three hill districts and carried out terrorist activities.
The militant leaders who attended the 1992 press conference -- Abdus Salam, president of Huji Bangladesh, field commander Manzur Hasan, Dhaka city unit president Maolana Delwar Hossain, publicity secretary Mufti Shafiqur Rahman, Maolana Mufti Abdul Hye -- remain untraced.
Forty-one armed men of the Huji arrested at a Cox's Bazar training camp in 1996 and handed down life-term were released on bail after the alliance government came to power.
The Huji Bangladesh top brass includes Shaikhul Hadith Allama Azizul Haq, also chief of a faction of ruling alliance partner Islami Oikya Jote (IOJ), Bangladesh Khelafat Majlish second-in-command Muhammad Habibur Rahman of Sylhet, Ataur Rahman Khan of Kishoreganj, Sultan Jaok of Chittagong, Abdul Mannan of Faridpur and Habibullah of Noakhali.
All of them are involved with different Islamic organisations and madrasas, and one of them, Ataur Rahman Khan, was elected an MP with BNP ticket in 1991 from Kishoreganj-3 constituency.
In an interview a few years back, Habibur Rahman revealed the names of those with whom he travelled to Afghanistan through Pakistan in 1988, visited some Taliban militant camps and even met al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
It may have some significance for the apparent government reluctance to go tough on Huji members that on October 6, 2005, eleven days before the ban came, Shaikhul Hadith and Habibur Rahman met Khaleda as 'Islamic scholars'.
The two were accompanied by Maolana Obaedul Haq, IOJ lawmaker Mufti Shahidul Islam, Ashraf Ali, Abdur Rab Yusufi, Yusuf Ashrafi, Nezamuddin, Mohammad Humayun Kabir and Tafazzul Haq Aziz.
The home ministry note banning Huji by the alliance government reads: "Harkat-ul Jihad Al Islami is a self-proclaimed terrorist organisation. Its activities are very sensitive and it is identified as a terrorist organisation. The government is declaring Harkat-ul Jihad Al Islami and all its activities banned on the basis of information received so far."
Only Mufti Hannan, a central committee member and operation commander of Huji, was arrested on October 1, 2005.
After his arrest, Hannan told the press he had been staying in the country as the former home minister Altaf Hossain Choudhury had assured him of "no fear" in staying in the country.
"Editor of monthly Madina Maolana Mohiuddin played the mediator between me and the home minister," Hannan told reporters.
He also told the court law enforcers were not supposed to arrest him as some influential ministers of the alliance government had assured him that he would be exempted from the charge of the attempt on Hasina.
"Soon after the coalition government assumed power, I submitted a mercy petition to the prime minister, the home minister and some other ministers. And in reply they assured me that they will let me off," Hannan had told the court in presence of a large number of lawyers, law enforcers, and newspersons.
More than a week before expiry of the alliance government's tenure in October, 2006 some Huji leaders including two top founding leaders Abdus Salam and Rahmat Ullah alias Sheikh Farid held a public meeting at Baitul Mukarram Mosque.
One of the organisers of the meeting told The Daily Star the Huji leaders had appeared after getting the go-ahead from the government.