A court in Bangladesh today handed down the death penalty to five operatives of a banned Islamist outfit allegedly linked to last year's Burdwan blast in West Bengal amid fears that the extremists were regrouping, taking advantage of the current political unrest in the country.
The five Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) militants were accused of killing a public prosecutor in 2007 who had argued the government's case in trying five top JMB leaders including its chief Shaikh Abdur Rahman, who were eventually hanged for the murder of two judges.
Additional district and sessions judge in southwestern Jhalakathi district, Abdul Halim pronounced the verdict as three of the five JMB convicts appeared in the dock while two others were tried in absentia, TV reports said.
The JMB reappeared on the terror radar after two of its alleged operatives were killed in October, 2014, apparently in an accidental explosion at a hideout in West Bengal's Burdwan district just over the border with Bangladesh.
The blast set off alarm bells on both sides of the border with high-level exchange of visits by senior security officials and arrest of several JMB activists in India and Bangladesh.
India's National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and Bangladesh's anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) exchanged lists of JMB operatives and Islamist militants.
Security experts have expressed fears that the focus of law enforcement agencies in tackling the political unrest has created space for extremist elements like JMB to reorganise and regroup after years of anti-militancy operations had virtually destroyed their networks.
The Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) yesterday came out with a report saying the extremists and criminal networks could exploit the resulting political void caused by extreme hostility between Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's ruling Awami League and her arch rival and former premier Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
"Violent Islamist factions are already reviving, threatening the secular, democratic order. While jihadi forces see both parties as the main hurdle to the establishment of an Islamic order, the AL and the BNP perceive each other as the main adversary," the ICG report read.
The central Bangladesh Bank has also alerted commercial banks on precautionary measures against use of banking systems for terror financing both at home and aboard.
JMB and other Bangladesh-based militant groups like HuJI, which emerged in a period in between 2001 and 2005, had been lying low after being beaten back by security forces but have now started to reemerge.
