by Mohammad Jamil Khan in The Daily Star, Oct 15, 2023
On November 20 last year, two death row convict militants, Abu Siddiq Sohel and Moinul Hasan Shamim, escaped from a Dhaka court with help from their associates.
While being taken to prison, the convicts assaulted their police escort, untied themselves from shackles and fled on a motorcycle, never to be seen again. Almost a year has passed since that day, but police are yet to get any trace of the two.
Sohel, an Ansar Al Islam member, and his associate Shamim were sentenced to death for the murder of publisher Faisal Arefin Dipon.
A high official of the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit recently told this correspondent the duo are now hiding “somewhere in the country”.
According to the CTTC unit, they stayed in a Savar house for a month before moving north.
“The militants took shelter in their associates’ houses,” the CTTC unit official said, requesting anonymity.
The CTTC said they came up with the information following the arrest of five members of Ansar Al Islam, including its nayeb-e-amir, from Jatrabari in Dhaka last Saturday.
“We were very close to arresting one of the escaped militants. But he managed to flee just two days before we conducted the drive,” said CTTC unit chief Md Asaduzzaman.
Investigators said the outfit has at least 70 modules or sleeper cells in 50 districts, each having at least four to five members.
In March 2021, several groups damaged and carried out arson attacks on establishments, including the land office, police lines, a music academy, a municipality office, a public library, a Hindu temple and the local press club in Brahmanbaria.
Some members of Ansar Al Islam worked as instigators behind the mayhem, according to police.
The outfit is now planning to conduct area-based attacks, with the outfit’s top leader and sacked major Syed Ziaul Haque giving instructions to its members in this regard, they said.
During the interrogation of the arrested Nayeb-e-Amir Sakhawatul Kabir, alias Anis alias Rafique, investigators have reportedly uncovered information about financiers and sympathisers of the outfit.
Contacted, Ahamedul Islam, additional deputy commissioner of the CTTC unit, said, “We are analysing their [financiers and sympathisers of the outfit] activities before taking actions against them. We have also got details of some financiers who donated funds from abroad.”
https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/news/escaped-militants-are-somewhere-the-country-3443711
