He had to plan for such a specialised cell because of the death of 14 militants in two major incidents – the Gulshan attack and the police raid in Kalyanpur. All of these men were members of the suicide squad.
On the other hand, five other suicide squad members were arrested from Dhaka in the last one month.
Due to these reasons, New JMB now has a crisis of members to be used in suicide missions. Tanvir Qadri was planning to form cells to continue missions in the future, investigators disclosed to Dhaka Tribune. He was also planning to rob banks.
After death of New JMB coordinator Tamim Chowdhury on September 3, Karim, the interim coordinator, was planning a major attack with a suicide squad who got training from him at a Dhaka dorm.
Karim had begun carrying out targeted killings before going for a major attack. The attempted killing of a Hindu priest in Narsingdi was their first such crime since the Gulshan attack, said officials of Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s special branch Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) Unit and Detective Branch (DB).
“Abdul Karim (Tanvir) took charge as the interim coordinator of the group after several New JMB leaders were killed in some recent police drives. Karim was plotting major terror attacks after he took charge,” Counter Terrorism unit’s ADC Sanwar Hossain told the Dhaka Tribune.
Militants in disarray after top leaders’ deaths
The New JMB militants are in disarray as their network has fallen apart following the deaths of several top leaders.
“The group was planning targeted killings to reinvigorate its activities. They were planning to go for major attacks if the small attacks were carried out successfully,” said a top official.
For targeted killings, they were planning to attack people of other religions. Maj Zahidul, who was killed during the police raid in Mirpur, was in charge of training suicide squad members, added the official.
“Police have already received info on a training camp for suicide squads in Dhaka. We are trying to locate the camp,” said the official.
The CT Unit official told the Dhaka Tribune that police had recovered four laptops, a pen drive and a diary of Maj Zahid from the Azimpur den and all these contained important information about the group’s plans.
In addition, the three female militants, all wives of major leaders of the group, who were arrested during the Azimpur raid have also provided important clues, he added.
“Crisis has deepened inside the terrorist group after their leader Tamim died. Now it does not have the capacity to train new suicide squad members and buy arms for their operations. That is why Karim, a former banker, was planning to rob a bank to collect money to fund operations,” said another top official wishing not to be named.
Police hunt for escaped militants
Police arrested five New JMB members from the city, but four of them managed to escape.
“All nine members came to Dhaka from the northern region. We managed to arrest five of them, but another four - Nannu, Sajib, Imran and Gypsy fled from the scene. All of them were in touch with Karim,” said the investigators.
Police is now trying to arrest those four so that important clues on Karim’s operations can be traced out, said the officials.
ADC Sanowar told the Dhaka Tribune they had successfully arrested a number of New JMB militants.
“We have obtained important clue from the interrogation of the arrestees and from evidence obtained from several militant dens. We are analysing the info and trying to arrest the escaped militants to go forward with the investigation,” he added.
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