Bangladesh’s counter-terrorism police said Tuesday that they had arrested five suspects and foiled a plan through a pro-Islamic State militant faction to attack a shrine of a Sufi saint in the town of Sylhet.
The suspects, known as members of the Neo-JMB, were also wanted for the explosion of a homemade bomb in the Paltan domain of Dhaka on 24 July, according to officials from the Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crimes Unit. In addition, all five were allegedly linked to an attempted bombing the following night.
“The arrested militants had a plan for the Hazrat Shahjalal shrine. We have thwarted it,” Sylhet Metropolitan Police Commissioner Golam Kibria told BenarNews. Sylhet, in northeastern Bangladesh, is about 240 km (150 miles) from Dhaka.
Hundreds of faithful make a stopover at the sacred shrine of the holy Sufi Hazrat Shahjalal every day, and the leaders of the country’s two main political parties historically launch their election campaigns by offering prayers at the shrine. In 2004, Harkatul Jihad al-Islami Bangladesh militants threw a grenade at then-British Ambassador Anwar Choudhury on its scale at the sacred site.
On Tuesday, police met suspects such as leader Sheikh Naimuzzan along with Sayem Mirza, Rubel Mahmud, Abdur Rahim Jewel and Sanaul Islam. Two of the suspects are college students.
“We raided various locations in the metropolitan domain of Sylhet and yet we captured the suspects,” the deputy commissioner of the anti-terrorist police Saiful Islam told BenarNews.
Police said they had been on high alert since mid-July after receiving reports of possible terrorist attacks in places, adding shrines, mosques and other devout sites.
Abdul Mannan, another assistant commissioner of the unit, said the terrorists had not been inactive during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our data shows [that] activists have used the virtual world to motivate and recruit members in this pandemic. But now they can’t cause a big attack,” Abdul Mannan told BenarNews.
Bangladesh has been hit by a series of militant attacks over the more than 12 months.
On 31 August 2019, a remote-controlled bomb attack in Dhaka injured three other people. More recently, police have been attacked with bombs since 29 April when three others were injured. A similar attack on June 26 injured two other people. Police and detonated two bombs on July 23.
The SITE Intelligence Group, a U.S.-based company. It monitors online communications between Islamic militant teams around the world, reported that Islamic State assumed the duty of the attacks even though government officials denied their lifestyle in Bangladesh.
The Neo-JMB blamed Bangladesh’s worst terrorist attack, a one-night stand at Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka in July 2016. The attack, claimed through the Islamic State, killed 29 people. Among them, 20 hostages were killed with machetes through five young gunmen, who died when government security forces attacked the café on the morning of July 2.