Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) Unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) on Sunday arrested two members of Neo JMB in connection with (Improvised Explosives Device) attacks targeting police personnel in city’s Science Lab and Gulistan. They were identified as Mehedi Hasan Tamim and Abdullah Ajmir.
Monirul Islam, head of the CTTC chief, disclosed this at a press conference at DMP Media Center in the capital on Monday. He said they arrested them from Mohammadpur area around 8:15pm on Sunday. According to the CTTC boss, Mehedi was directly involved in the August 30 Science Lab and April 29 Gulistan attacks. Several policemen were injured in the blasts. Ajmir assisted Mehedi in these bomb attacks. The two were shown arrested in the Gulistan bomb blast.
Militants from engineers Monirul, also the additional commissioner of the DMP said,“ Mehedi and Ajmir are members of the operational wing of Neo JMB. Both of them are students of Khulna University of Engineering and Technology ( KUET), and have been involved with militancy since the beginning of their university life.” They completed their graduation degree from the Mechanical Engineering Department.
Though they were engineers, they did not take up professions as engineers. Instead, they got involved in militancy. They were friends since they studied together at KUET. They became radicalized through the internet. In the beginning they used to write for different blogs of Ansar-al-Islam. But soon they took up the ideology of Islamic State (IS).
They later formed a group to conduct attacks on police officials at different places in order to be noticed by IS. They received training in Bhola's remote Chor area in February last year, and began New JMB operations in Narayanganj at the beginning of this year. They carried out bomb attacks targeting police in city’s Gulisthan and Science Laboratory.
Attacks to draw attention of IS CTTC claimed that all the recent bomb attacks targeting police at Gulistan and Science Lab were carried out by New JMB only to draw attention of Islamic State. CTTC conducted the drive based on information squeezed from Farid Uddin Rumee and Mishuk Khan Mizan, the two who were arrested during Narayanganj militant den bust on September 23.
They are members of the same group. Ajmir was working as a high official at a corporate organisation, whereas Tamim was unemployed. Azjmir was one of the four persons shown in the recent so called IS video, Monirul also said adding that he posed in the video with a walkie talkie given to him by the corporate office he works at for official use.
Tamim was present at the scene during both the attacks whereas, Azmir was not physically present there but he was one of the masterminds who was involved in making the IEDs used during the attacks.
