Staff Reporter :
The 26 Bangladeshis, whom the Singapore government deported recently, do not have any link with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), police said.
In a press briefing on Thursday, Monirul Islam, Joint-Commissioner of Detective Branch of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said, “Fourteen out of 26 are the members of the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), but none of the 26 people maintain any link with Al Qaeda and the ISIS.”
Monirul Islam said that police filed case against 14 under Anti-Terrorism Act and they landed in the jail on December 21 last year.
“Though the rest 12 have been freed, they are now under intelligence surveillance,” Monirul Islam said. On Wednesday, the Interior Ministry of Singapore said that police arrested 27 Bangladeshis because they supported the armed jihad ideology of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and the ISIS. Out of 27, the Singapore government had already sent back 26 to Bangladeshis.
The Singapore and other international newspapers and news agencies on Wednesday ran stories on it.
Monirul Islam said that the Singapore police black-listed them for their alleged link with the militant outfit and sent them back to Bangladesh in the months of November and December.
“After their (26 people) return, we interrogated them and found 14 people to have link the Ansarullah Bangla Team. Actually, they are the members of the Ansarullah Bangla Team chief Jashim Uddin Rahmania,” he said.
“They are also the followers of war crime prisoner Delawar Hossain Sayedee,” he said, adding that the plainclothes police collected the soft copy of books written by Jashim Uddin Rahmania.
Citing newspapers’ stories, he said that they staying in Singapore were plotting terror attack in Bangladesh.
“But we have not gathered any specific information from them whether they were plotting terror attack in Bangladesh or not,” the DB joint-commissioner said, adding all 26 were labourers. He said that they used to listen to religious sermons in Singapore mosques after prayers.
