4 suspected New JMB men arrested

The Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit of Police has arrested four suspected members of the banned militant outfit Jam'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (New JMB).

They were arrested from the Ramna area in Dhaka on Monday around 6pm, Deputy Commissioner (DC) (media) Masudur Rahman of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) said on Tuesday.

A case has been registered against them at Ramna police station under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Books containing extremist ideology and mobile phones with similar content were seized from them at the time.

The arrestees are Arif Mollah, 28, Md Elias Hossain alias Mithu, 28, Md Farhad Ali alias Fuad, 31, and Muntasim Billah alias Sabbir, 21.

According to a press release from CTTC, the arrestees are active members of New JMB.

They previously made a video on the banks of the Nagar River in Sanjaypur village under Bogra’s Dupchanchia upazila, led by Rakibul Hasan alias Artugul in mid-2018, hoping that Islamic State’s (IS) would publish it.

Later, they went into hiding after Rakibul was arrested in the operation “Gordian Knot” in Narsingdi district in 2018, the CTTC sources said.

Recently, they were allegedly instructed by their Ameer to make a similar video, and thus they came to Dhaka to consult on how to make the video, the sources also said.

During the primary interrogation the CTTC found out that the arrestees were active in spreading extremist ideology through various online IDs and collecting members for their organization.