Militant allegedly involved in attack on publisher held in Bangladesh

DHAKA: Detectives in the Bangladesh capital on Thursday announced the arrest of a suspected member of the banned Ansarullah Bangla Team for his alleged involvement

DHAKA: Detectives in the Bangladesh capital on Thursday announced the arrest of a suspected member of the banned Ansarullah Bangla Team for his alleged involvement in an attack on a secular publisher last year.

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Police produced Mohammad Sumon Hossain, who has several aliases such as Shihab, Sakiband Saiful, before journalists in the detective branch headquarters in Dhaka amid a nationwide crackdown on militants.

Hossain was arrested on Wednesday night from near Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, said Monirul Islam, head of a police counter-terrorism unit. He said Hossa indirectly took part in the attack on publisher Ahmed Rashid Tutul in October as he had published books by a prominent Bangladeshi-American writer who promoted atheism.

Tutul survived the attack in his office in Dhaka. Two of his friends were seriously injured.

The police official said Hossa in was an employee of a private company in the port city of Chittagong. Islam said detectives learnt about Hossain from two other suspected militants who were arrested earlier this week from Kamrangir Char area near Dhaka .“They gave us many vital information and we acted on the basis of that,” he said. Hossain was in a list of suspected militants allegedly involved in such attacks that was announced by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police last month. Police also announced a bounty of 200,000 takas for his capture.

On the day of the attack on Tutul, another group separately killed another publisher in his office in Dhaka.