Staff Reporter :A Dhaka court on Wednesday granted seven-day remand for each five Singapore- returned Bangladeshi nationals who were arrested by detective police from the city’s Banasree area earlier on Tuesday noon on charge of militancy. The suspected militants were produced before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate under an anti-terror case filed against them by Dhaka police with Rampura police station same day. Additional CMM Ali Masud Sheikh passed the order as investigation officer Mansur Ali Arif of Detective Branch sought 10-day remands for each of the accused.The arrestees are: Rana Mia, 31, Mizanur Rahman, 42, Md Alamgir, 31, Md Tajminul Islam, 28, and Md Masud Rana, 33. Police recovered some Jihadi documents and passports from their possession. According to police, all the five went to Singapore in between 2007 to 2011 and they were deported to Bangladesh from Singapore on April 29.They were not involved with the ISB group, Singapore authorities have said, but had been found to be in possession of Jihad-related material or to support the use of armed violence for a religious cause.”The main target of five deported militants was to organize Jihad in Bangladesh. We are verifying whether they have any link with 27 other militants, who were earlier sent back by Singapore few months ago,” Monirul Islam, Head of Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crimes Unit, said on Wednesday. When asked about the militant’s hit list, the CTTCU Chief further said, “We’re cross-checking the information about their assassination plan. So far as I know, they were turned into militants after going to Singapore.” Echoing the same, Deputy Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Maruf Hossain Sardar said the five were being investigated for possible connections with local militant group Ansarullah Bangla Team [ABT]. “We monitored their activities and then arrested them. A court granted seven-day police remand to them,” he stated. In the meanwhile, the Ministry of Home Affairs [of Singapore] on Wednesday said eight Bangladeshi men held in Singapore for allegedly plotting attacks in their homeland had formed an Islamist cell that met in parks and open fields and shared radical propaganda and videos.The Singapore MHA said it had issued two-year detention orders for the men, who it says called themselves the Islamic State in Bangladesh [ISB], under Singapore’s colonial-era Internal Security Act, which allows suspects to be held for lengthy periods without trial.”The ISB is the first group comprising all foreigners to be detained under the ISA for terrorism-related activities in Singapore,” the Singapore MHA said in a statement, adding that that its investigations showed ‘the ISB had identified several possible targets in Bangladesh.’ Giving further details on Wednesday, authorities said the group had a hierarchical structure with a leader, deputy leader and members assigned specific roles such as finance.Its members had each worked in Singapore for between three and 10 years and generally lived in different accommodation, the MHA said, adding they were not known to have been radicalised when they arrived in the city-state. There were no indications that they had planned to carry out attacks in Singapore, it said.In January, Singapore Police had arrested 27 Bangladeshi construction workers who supported Islamist groups including al Qaeda and Islamic State late last year. All 27 have been deported.Dhaka Police said the same month it would charge 14 of those deported with membership of ABT.Meanwhile, the authorities in Singapore said there was no indication of a group connection between the eight men recently detained and those arrested last year, although some of them were personally acquainted.
