[DAWN] Bangladeshi police tossed in the clinkPlease don't kill me!
four suspected members of Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
in the capital, Dhaka, on Monday, including a regional coordinator for the holy warrior group who told police they had been trained in Pakistain.
Reports of the growing influence of Islamic State, which controls territory in Syria and Iraq, have raised alarm bells across South Asia, though it remains unclear whether holy warriors organising under the Islamic State name in the region are acting on their own or as part of a centralised initiative coming out of the Middle East.
"We arrested them in the city early on Monday, carrying a huge number of leaflets related to militancy for training, a laptop and other materials," Sheikh Nazmul Alam, deputy police commissioner with Dhaka's detective and criminal intelligence division, told news hounds.
The suspected coordinator, whom police identified as Mohammad Sakhawatul Kabir, told police that he and the other three men had received training in Pakistain, Alam said.
The Pak authorities were not immediately available for comment.
Alam said Kabir told police while under interrogation that the cell he ran from Dhaka was planning to collect funds and weapons for attacks on Bangladesh government targets.
"The aim of the attacks was to establish a caliphate state in Bangladesh," Alam said.
Police in Bangladesh, which has been in the throes of a political crisis since controversial elections last January, have arrested eight people for suspected involvement with Islamic State in the past year.
"Of course this is a growing concern, particularly at a time when the country has been experiencing a politically unstable situation," said Sakhawat Hussain, a retired army brigadier and a security analyst in Dhaka.
Bangladesh's leading daily newspaper The Daily Star released a photo of the arrested holy warriors, stating that the group leaders have been put on a five-day remand after being arrested last night.
The report further mentioned that the suspects were identified before the media as Sakhawatul Kabir, regional commander of IS Bangladesh chapter, Nazrul Alam, a financier, Anwar Hossain, a convict of an kabooms case, and Rabiul Islam.