Police to grill five Bangladesh workers deported from Singapore for suspected extremist attacks

Police have been granted seven days to question five men deported from Singapore for allegedly planning extremist attacks in Bangladesh.

They were produced in court on Wednesday after being arrested at Rampura the day before, according to Police’s Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) Unit.

The men, who worked in construction in Singapore, are being suspected for recruiting members for militant group Ansal al Islam, police said in their remand plea.

But their lawyer SMA Barek rebutted the claim. saying, “They have been staying in Singapore legally. They also came home from time to time. They are not involved in extremist activities.”

But Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Ali Masud denied them bail and ordered that they be questioned for seven days each, said Assistant Commissioner Mirash Uddin of the court police’s prosecution wing.

Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Monirul Islam, who heads the CTTC, announced the arrests on Tuesday. He said the men were sent home a few days back and were under surveillance on suspicion that they had been recruiting militants.

Police claimed they were radicalised in Singapore after they travelled there in 2007. They had no prior charges levelled against them in Bangladesh.

Singapore on Tuesday announced that it arrested eight more Bangladeshi nationals who it said were part of a clandestine group which they called Islamic State in Bangladesh (ISB).

Members of the ISB, founded by 31-year-old worker Mizanur Rahman, were planning to wage a 'jihad' in Bangladesh, according to the southeast Asian country’s Internal Security Department.

In January, 27 Bangladeshi construction workers were arrested in Singapore on charges of supporting ‘Islamist groups including al-Qaeda and Islamic State’. Twenty-six of them were deported.

Fourteen of the 26 have since been jailed in Bangladesh on "terror charges", police said, but denied they had any link to the Islamic State or al-Qaeda.