| Dhaka to hand over Anup Chetia | By Sumon K Chakrabarti
New Delhi, Feb 18 (bdnews24.com) – Dhaka has come to an agreement with India to hand over Anup Chetia, the United Liberation Front of Asom leader who has been in a Bangladeshi jail since 1996, state minister for foreign affairs Hasan Mahmud told an Indian news network this week.
"We have mutually agreed on the handover, now we have to decide on the formalities of how to hand him over. It will also include handover of Bangladeshi criminals who have fled to India," Mahmud told CNN-IBN in an interview aired on Wednesday.
Mahmud, who is also a special assistant to prime minister Sheikh Hasina, told CNN-IBN that past Bangladeshi governments since 2001 had indeed sponsored terrorism.
"Since 2001, BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami had ministers in their government who chanted slogans to turn Bangladesh into Afghanistan. So they nurtured a range of terrorist organisations. "Terrorism in Bangladesh started and then flourished under that government," said Mahmud. The junior minister also admitted to cross-border linkages of terrorist groups based in Bangladesh.
India has long accused Bangladesh of harbouring anti-India insurgents and terrorists, an allegation Bangladesh had denied. Mahmud said terror groups like the banned extremist outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islam (HuJI), Bangladesh still existed in underground pockets in Bangladesh. "They are banned, but they are in hideouts now," he said.
Asked whether the Bangladesh government was trying to trace HuJI hideouts, Mahmud said: "Definitely, we are trying to find out their locations." He promised a Bangladeshi crackdown on militant groups. "Since terrorist attacks have been happening in the region in the past few months, even in Mumbai, there are cross-border linkages of these terrorists," said Mahmud. "Not only Lashker ((Laskhar-e-Taiba) and HuJI, but other terror organisations also.
"They trained in Afghanistan, they were in Pakistan, then they came here. It's dangerous.
"They cooperate among themselves, now we have to cooperate among ourselves in the region to combat them," Mahmud said.
The US blacklisted HujI Bangladesh (HuJI-B) last year as a 'global terrorist organisation'. A statement signed by then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said HuJI-B chief Mufti Abdul Hannan, arrested by Bangladesh authorities, had been "implicated in a number of attacks in Bangladesh and abroad."
The US also praised Dhaka's anti-militant campaign at the time, saying "Bangladesh has been a strong partner of the United States in fighting terrorism, and has taken effective action to bring HuJI terrorists to justice and to prevent further attacks." Mahmud told CNN-IBN Wednesday that the newly elected Awami league government is working for "a new Bangladesh."
Sumon K Chakrabarti is the Chief National Correspondent of CNN-IBN and writes exclusively for bdnews24.com
bdnews24.com/skc/rah/bd/2109h. | | |