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| Bangladesh | |
| International arms syndicate responsible for Bangladesh bomb smuggling | |
| 2005-12-18 | |
My money's on Dawood Ibrahim's D-Company being behind this and as we can see there's all the usual al-Qaeda connections on the periphery. Maybe their buddy Viktor Bout's involved too ...
The security specialists are very much worried over an intelligence report about the large-scale smuggling of arms and explosives through the clandestine arms-route from China via Myanmar and India to support different terrorist groups specially the banned Islamist terrorist outfit Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). Requesting anonymity a senior intelligence official told The Bangladesh Observer that "the caches of sophisticated arms, explosives and other bomb making materials recently recovered by the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and Police in the hill districts and other parts of the country had the origin China and India". The terrorist outfits active in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) region and the JMB have been collecting large-scale arms -ammunition and explosives through the international arms smuggling syndicate. Chittagong regional commander of JMB already confessed to the investigators that Sunny (arrested military commander of JMB and brother of most wanted JMB kingpin Shaikh Abdur Rahman) had collected the deadly explosive materials such as Power Gel, Water Gel, Ammonium Nitrate from India through some unknown sources. Not only that sometimes they got training for using guns and making bombs. On the other hand, the security personnel recently recovered a huge cache of sophisticated arms and ammunition such as AK-47, AK-56, AK-25, M-16 assault rifles, grenades, grenade launchers, RDX, plastic explosives and mortars along with shells from the dens of insurgency outfits and terrorist groups in the hilly districts of Bandarban, Rangamati and Khagrachhari. According to the intelligence reports, most of the arms and explosives recovered in the CHT were made in China. And the consignments of arms and explosives were brought inside the country through Myanmar bordering routes with the help of international arms syndicate. Confident sources said that earlier China one of the biggest clandestine arms bazars had long been using Pakistan for supply of assault rifles, ammunition, rockets and explosives to the terrorist and insurgent groups in India. On the other hand, the terrorists and insurgency groups active inside the country had long been getting arms and explosive supply from India. But, the international arms syndicate got a big hit when the INTERPOL had busted the Golden Triangle, notoriously famous for drug and arms paddling. And Indian security forces managed to bust another infamous arms route from Mizoram to China. The security agencies of Bangladesh failed to bust the arms smuggling routes though they could unearth some hideouts of JMB and hilly insurgency outfits in the recent days, it is leant. Sources said that unloading of arms and ammunition in the mid-sea near the Chittagong Port and offshore of Cox's Bazar now has become expensive and as well as risky due to increased surveillance of Navy. For the said reasons, the international arms syndicate might have revived the old routes for supplying arms-ammunition to the terrorist and insurgent groups operating in South Asia. The Bangladeshi intelligence agencies came to know about the revival of China-Myanmar-Bangladesh route following the recovery of huge ammunition for Chinese assault rifles and explosives from a truck near Bagura in Bangladesh last year. The consignment was probably sent to the Maoist groups operating in Nepal. It was also learnt that the arms peddlers failed to contact their Bagura agents (members of an Islamic terrorist group) for further transportation and abandoned the truck at Kahalu village. According to an intelligence report, before kick-off the countrywide operation, Jamaat-ul-Mujahidin has trained several hundred militants at the secret camps in Rajsahi district with the help of foreign trainners. Later, training camps were opened in at least 25 districts when they got the arms-explosive supplies. Sources said that international terrorist outfit Al-Qaeda is involved in running several training camps inside Bangladesh, specially along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border and a couple of places near Dhaka, where a few hundred JMB cadres got training on explosives and gun handling. | |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |