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bdnews24.com http://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/2013/08/05/bangladesh- in-im-terror- foo tpr

India Correspondent, bdnews24.com

Bangladesh in IM terror footprint

Published: 2013-08-05 10:15:40.0 BdST Updated: 2013-08-05 10:15:40.0 BdST

Invest igations into the Jul 7 bombings at the Buddhist holy town of Bodh Gaya has provided

Indian intelligence with evidence of an ever-widening footprint of the country's powerful

Islamic radical group into its northeastern region and neighbouring Bangladesh.

The Indian Mujahideen, which is responsible for some of the bloodiest bo mbings in Indian temples and public

places o ver the last decade or more, has now tied up with smaller Islamic radicals groups in northeast India an

Bangladesh, Intelligence Bureau (IB) of f icials said.

"They have played into growing Muslim angst over last year's riots in Assam's Bodo areas and against

Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state," said an IB joint director but on condition of anonymity f or

professional reasons.

The IM, the acronym by which the terror outf it is better known, f irst positioned itself in Assam's western and

central regions which were hit by riots in which Muslims of East Bengali origin were targeted extens ively.

"The IM created a relief f ront with considerable f inance that

operated through a wide network of mos ques in Assam. They

worked their way into the vacuum created by the riots and t he

state government's failure to take care of the beleaguered

minorities," the IB of f icial said, sitting on details of this

network which he was unwilling to share, so that "our

penetration into these networks are not revealed ".

The IB of f icial said the relief f ront also picked on radicalised

Muslim youths f rom these areas and IM modules s tarted to

train them in bombings, weapons use and sabotage-

communication techniques.

One such module f rom Assam, created out o f the remnants of the f ormer Muslim United Liberation Tigers of

Assam (MULTA), is said to be responsible f or the Bodh Gaya bombings.

Bodh Gaya was targeted because it is visited by tens o f thousands o f Buddhist f rom Myanmar, where

Rohingya Muslims faced considerable violence and displacement.

The Lot us clocks which were used f or t he more t han a dozen t ime-bombs that exploded in Bodh Gaya on Jul

were all bought in Assam a year ago, when the IM was expanding its network into the s tate in the af termath of

the violence in Bodo areas.

IB investigato rs have traced back the purchase of the Lotus clocks and now have a fair idea of the explosives

devices created around it to go o f f on pre-set timings.

Not only did the IM raised its modules in Assam fro m remnants of older and somewhat defunct Muslim radical

groups like MULTA, it also penetrated neighbouring Bangladesh t o tap into the radical groups that have been

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disarray f ollowing heavy crackdown by the Sheikh Hasina government.

"The IM has moved into Sylhet and Chittagong regions in a big way, tapping into radicalised Muslim youths f ro

Jamaat-Shibir combine, HUJI and Rohingya armed groups which were suf f ering a huge crackdown by

Bangladesh security agencies," a senior of f icial of India's external intelligence said.

He said the Rohingya suf f erings in Myanmar and the war crimes t rials in Bangladesh, in which Jamaat leaders

were handed out death sentences, were whipped up to tap into radicalised youth f or developing terror

modules.

Report s have been received of a tie-up between Laskhar e Tayyaba (LET) and Indian Mujahideen to develop

the t error modules in Bangladesh.

This has been revealed by arrested IM operatives Syed Maqbool and Imran Khan who are being heavily

interrogated by Indian intelligence.

Indian signals-cyber surveillance that ruotinely picks on 'extremist chatt er' also po ints to the t ie-up.

"We are checking on report s that dozens o f young Muslims have been recruited by these two outf its with help

f rom Bangladesh's overground Islamist parties and are being trained in suicide bombings and cont rolled

explos ions in secret bases used by Rohingya rebels on Bangladesh-Myanmar border," the external intelligenceof f icial said.

He said Bangladesh and Myanmar intelligence have been f ed back the leads which they are also pursuing on

their own.

At least one such base has been located in Chit tagong Hill Tracts - Arakans border.

All this points to a gro wing trans-nat ional network of radicalised terro r modules out to avenge Muslim woes in

Assam and Arakans or punishment of Islamists in Bangladesh operat ing on a sub-cont inental scale a new

challenge for security agencies in India, Bangladesh and Myanmar.

The current invest igations also f ocus on the ro le of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) which built up

both the LET and the IM and the possible linkages of the terror modules in the eastern slice of South Asia wit

those in Af ghanistan-Pakistan (AFPAK) region.

The LET which was responsible fo r the 26/11 Mumbai attacks now operates out o f Pakistan under a new

name, Jamaat-ud-Dawa , which is pro jected as the charity group, the kind of cover IM used to expand into

Assam last year.