E-Paper
Bangladesh offers militants financial help, normal life
DHAKA: The head of an elite Bangladeshi anti-crime agency on Monday asked militants from radical groups to return to normal life, promising they would be awarded
DHAKA: The head of an elite Bangladeshi anti-crime agency on Monday asked militants from radical groups to return to normal life, promising they would be awarded 10 lakh Takas and an opportunity for rehabilitation.
Benazir Ahmed, director general of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), made the announcement after a 12-hour search for militant hideouts across vast riverine chars (shoals) in Sariakandi and Dhunat sub-districts of northern Bogra district.
Ahmed also announced that any person who provides information to security agencies about suspected hideouts or militants will be awarded 5 lakh Takas. Members of several radicals groups, including the banned Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), will be rehabilitated if they want to return to normal life, he said.
The offer came a little more than a fortnight after armed militants stormed a café in the Gulshan diplomatic zone of Dhaka and butchered 20 hostages, most of them foreigners, before being gunned down by security forces.
Officials said they conducted a massive search with about 550 personnel of different security agencies since early on Monday, covering vast areas along the Jamuna river where some militants were reportedly trained.
During the search, Ahmed said, security forces seized some books on jihad and some weapons but did not give details of the recoveries and the places where they were made. The search covered the remote Char Kajla and Nimgachhi area of Bogra.
The drive was conducted after Shafiul, a suspected militant captured during an attack on Eid-ul-Fitr on July 7 at Sholakia in Kishorganj district, told officials he was trained up in the riverine area.
Ahmed said some recoveries showed that militants had hideouts in the area but had left. Monday’s move was apparently aimed at spreading the message that no place would be spared from surveillance as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government is facing the political challenge of rooting out militants reportedly belonging to domestic radical groups tied to international organisations.
