More than 3,000 people, some of them known Islamist militants, have been arrested in Bangladesh in a series of police raids intended to quell a wave of deadly machete attacks against bloggers, minorities and others, police said on Saturday.
The roundup began last week after militants killed the wife of a police superintendent who had been investigating the machete attacks.
Five militants were killed in shootouts with police over the course of the week, police officials said, adding that the militants were members of Jamaat-ul-Mujahidin Bangladesh, one of two groups authorities believe are behind most of the machete attacks.
Photo: AP
Many citizens criticized the government for not taking action sooner against the militants, who have created a climate of terror since they began murdering secularist bloggers and others more than three years ago.
Since 2013, bloggers, freethinkers, religious minorities, foreigners, gay activists, followers of more liberal strains of Islam and others have been killed in attacks carried out mostly by groups of young men wielding machetes.
The government had previously arrested dozens of people involved in at least 40 such attacks, but until this past week had not carried out a nationwide crackdown. People close to the government said leaders were hesitant to clamp down for fear of alienating radical fundamentalists, who form a large voting bloc.
“I welcome this special drive. It should have been taken much earlier,” said Shahriar Kabir, general secretary of the South Asian People’s Union Against Fundamentalism and Communalism.
The police believe Kabir was one of the militants’ top targets, and he leaves his house only with police protection.
However, the leading opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), accused the government of using the crackdown as an excuse to round up opponents.
“In the name of an anti-militant drive, the government is arresting opposition activists, including BNP and other anti-government people,” BNP senior joint secretary-general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said.
AKM Kamrul Ahsan, a Bangladeshi police spokesman, said the crackdown began at 6am on Friday and that within 24 hours more than 3,000 suspects had been arrested nationwide.
Five members of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahidin Bangladesh group were killed in shootouts with the police during the week, including one militant wanted in connection with the killing of a doctor last year and another who was suspected of shooting up a Shiite mosque during evening prayers last year, police said.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, speaking at a meeting of her Awami League party committee on Saturday, vowed that the killers would be hunted down. Hasina also suggested that opposition parties had been involved in the killings of the bloggers and others.
In addition to local groups, the Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for some of the killings on social media, and several attacks have been claimed by a faction of al-Qaeda on the Indian subcontinent.
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