Jamaat ameer Shafiqur arrested for alleged militant link

Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami ameer Dr Shafiqur Rahman has been arrested for his alleged involvement in militancy. 

A team of DB police arrested him from Bashundhara Residential area in the capital at 1am on Tuesday. 

Additional Commissioner of Police Md Asaduzzaman, Chief of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC), confirmed the matter to Jago News.  

He said, Jamaat ameer Shafiqur Rahman was arrested for his alleged involvement in militancy. He was shown arrested in the case filed against his son under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Earlier on November 9, a bomb disposal unit of the CTTC arrested Jamaat ameer’s son Dr Rafat Chowdhury from Sylhet for his alleged involvement in militancy. 

CTCC said, Rafat was the chief coordinator of banned militant outfit Ansal Al Islam’s Sylhet region.

In 2021, Rafat travelled the hill tracts after contacting both Rakhine armed organisations ‘ARSA’ and ‘RSO’. He held a meeting with the RSO leaders at Bandarban’s Naikhongchhari border.

On 1 November this year, three members of Ansar Al Islam were arrested from the capital’s Saidabad area.

They are Sejadul Islam Sahab Tanim elias Isa alias Arafat alias Anwar alias Anbir, 24, Md. Zahid Hasan Bhuiyan, 21 and Syed Riaz Ahmad, 22.

On 6 November, they gave a statement in court where they admitted that each of them joined the outfit through Rafat.