Jamaat-e-Islami was planning to trigger unrest in export-focused clothing sector before Eid, police say 

Police believe the Jamaat-e-Islami had plans to spark unrest in the readymade garment sector of Bangladesh ahead of the Eid-ul-Azha.

Staff Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 7 Sept 2015, 07:32 PM
Updated : 7 Sept 2015, 10:14 PM

Their suspicion was shared with the media on Monday after the arrests of 13 Jamaat leaders and activists, including former MPs Mia Golam Parawar and Mojibur Rahman, in Dhaka.
 
The Jamaat men were nabbed during a raid on a house at Pallabi at noon with handmade bombs when they were holding a secret meeting there, Pallabi Police Station OC Dadan Fakir told bdnews24.com.
 
Jamaat leader Harunur Rashid, who was also arrested, owns that building.
 
Rashid, who is also the chief of the party’s labour wing Sramik Kalyan Federation, lives on the second floor while the flats on the other floors are rented.
 
Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Detective Branch Deputy Commissioner (West) Md Sazzadur Rahman said the raid was conducted based on a tip-off that the Jamaat leaders were planning acts of sabotage.
 
On Monday evening, he told reporters, “During questioning after their arrests, detectives learnt that they (Jamaat leaders) were planning to use a garment factory’s workers not being paid salaries and bonus ahead of the Eid-ul-Azha as a ploy to create unrest.
 
“Their goal was to put government in a tight spot,” he said.
 
Rahman said, “Evidence gathered from the scene suggested the Jamaat and Shibir leaders and activists had secretly met there several times.”
 
Islami Chhatra Shibir is the student wing of the Jamaat, which had opposed Bangladesh’s independence and ‘substantially contributed’ to forming auxiliary forces during the Liberation War to help the Pakistani army, according to the war crimes tribunal observation.
 
The DB official said they would present the arrested Jamaat men in court and plead to remand them in custody.
 
“We will find out which garment factory they had targeted and who else are involved.”
 
Apart from Parawar, Mojibur and Rashid, the other arrestees were identified as Kafrul Jamaat unit chief Md Taslim, Jahangir Alam, Abul Kalam Azad, Md Mansur Rahman, Jakir Hossain, ABM Nurullah alias Mohammadullah, Abul Hashem, Md Sabbir, Majibor Rahman Bhuiyan and Ashraful Islam Iqbal.

Police said they recovered at least 25 wooden sticks from the scene that were couriered from Chittagong. Receipts of donations from at least 400 Jamaat and Shibir members were also seized.

DC Sazzadur Rahman told bdnews24.com they would file two cases, one for planning acts of sabotage and the other under the Explosives Act, against the 13.

“All of them are leaders and activists of Jamaat and Shibir. We also seized 20 handmade bombs from that house.”

Mia Golam Parawar, a former MP from Khulna, is an assistant secretary general of Jamaat and Mojibur Rahman, a former Rajshahi lawmaker, is an acting Nayeb-e-Ameer of the party.

Parawar currently has 12 cases against him, Mojibur has 45 and Taslim is accused in nine cases lodged over acts of sabotage.

Several of the cases both Parawar and Mojibur are accused in were filed over acts of sabotage. They are also being tried in a case over clashes with police on Nov 5, 2012, at Motijheel.

Media reports suggest these two, along with several others, had been running the Jamaat since most of its top leaders were convicted of war crimes.

Most of those convicted and those standing trial for their crimes against humanity during Bangladesh’s War of Independence in 1971 are from the Jamaat.

After their arrests, the party in a statement on Monday claimed the arrestees were holding a meeting of the Sramik Kalyan Federation’s central committee at that Pallabi house.

Acting chief Moqbul Ahmed claimed there that police had ‘staged the drama of seizing 20 handmade bombs from the Jamaat leaders’.

The Jamaat, which is a member of the BNP-led 20-Party alliance, has also announced nationwide demonstrations for Tuesday against the arrests