Bangladesh police detain more bombing suspects

DHAKA (Reuters) – Bangladesh police arrested 10 more
suspected activists of the Islamist group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen,
blamed for recent serial bombings that killed two people and
injured about 100 across the country, police said on Saturday.

Police said the suspected militants were picked up in
southeastern and western regions of the country and were placed
under the joint interrogation of police and army troopers.

“The investigation is progressing satisfactorily,” M. Abdul
Quayyum, inspector general of police, told local television.

Police were looking for 500 or more Islamists believed to
have been involved in the August 17 bombing campaign in which
hundreds of nearly simultaneous blasts rocked the country.

But the group’s supreme leader Shayek Abdur Rahman is still
at large. Rahman and his close associates are rumoured to have
fled Bangladesh, though police say they have no proof.

“Of the nearly 150 now in police custody, dozens confessed
their involvement in the bombings. They either carried, or
planted and detonated locally made bombs fixed with time
devices,” said a police officer who asked not to be named.

No one claimed responsibility for the blasts but copies of
a leaflet found at most bomb sites carried a call by
Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, a group which is banned, for the
introduction of Islamic rule in Bangladesh, a Muslim democracy.

Moulana Fariduddin Mashud, a former director of the
government-run Islamic Foundation, and Moulana Abdus Sattar, a
leader of the radical Ahley Hadis group, were among those being
interrogated. They were arrested at Dhaka airport along with
four others while trying to fly abroad.

Police suspect that Mashud and Sattar, who run a number of
Islamic non-government organisations, funded the serial
bombings.