TerrorismBangladesh Islamist militants sentenced for bombing attacks
Bangladeshi court sentences five members of the Islamist Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen to ten years in jail for masterminded a series of bombings in 2005 as part of a campaign to impose Sharia law in the moderate Muslim nation. The Islamist group had been quiet since six of its leaders were executed in 2007, but lately has resumed its terrorist attacks, targeting pro-democracy bloggers and activists for religious minorities.
A court in Bangladesh earlier today (Monday) sentenced five radical Islamists to ten years in prison, having found them responsible for a 2005 wave of bombing attacks. The attacks were part of a campaign by the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen terrorist group to replace the current legal system in the Muslim-majority country, which is based on British common law, with strict Sharia law.
DW reports that the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen detonated almost 500 bombs nearly simultaneously on 17 August 2005 across 300 locations in fifty Bangladeshi cities. The xplosions caused only two deaths.
Six members of the Islamist group had faced charges over the bombings, but one of whom was later acquitted due to lack of evidence.
The Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen continued its terror campaign after 2005, but resorted to using suicide attacks on courthouses, killing twenty-five people in total. In 2007, Bangladeshi court sentenced six of the group’s leader to death, and they were executed.
The execution of its leadership silenced the group for a while, but in the past few months its followers have begun to launch new attacks – the two most recent ones an attack on a Shiite shrine and shooting three foreign tourists, killing two of them.
Analysts note that Islamist violence has been on the rise in Bangladesh since last year, with four secular and pro-democracy bloggers and a publisher killed, as the terrorists appear to target activists who work on behalf of religious minorities and the rule of law.
The police has also become more active in its approach to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, killing five members of the group since November in raids on the group’s safe houses.
