Dhaka – Today the 17th of August is the 11th anniversary of the countrywide serial bomb blasts carried out by banned Islamic militant outfit Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) in 63 out of 64 district headquarters in 2005, the penultimate year of departure of the BNP-led alliance government.
On this day 11 years back, JMB militants carried out the bomb attacks in a synchronised way mainly at courts and government institutions in 63 district towns on the morning of 17 August, 2005, leaving three people dead and several hundred wounded.
The group set off the bombs to give a wake-up call to the government about its active emergence.Around 300 cases had been filed with different police stations across the country in connection with the serial bomb blasts.
Many of the cases have already been disposed of sentencing JMB members, including its top leaders to death, and life imprisonment while the remaining ones are under trial.
Six top JMB leaders, including its supremo Abdur Rahman and his deputy Bangla Bhai, were executed on 29 March, 2007, on the basis of verdicts given little over a year before, for killing two Jhalakati judges.
The rest are Abdul Awal, JMB Majlish-e-Shura (highest decision-making body) member and Rahman’s son-in-law, its military commander and Rahman’s youngest brother Ataur Rahman Sunny and suicide bomber Iftekhar Hasan Mamun.
Police submitted charge sheets in all the cases filed in connection with the 17 August countrywide serial bombings.
Verdicts in many cases were delivered while others are now under trial.
Police sources said after Maulana Saidur Rahman became ameer of JMB there were three groups– one of which accepted his leadership another denied it while the other remained inactive.
Later New JMB was formed comprising members of the groups that denied his leadership and remained inactive and a few operatives who were released from jail.
Law enforcers claimed that the members of this new JMB offshoot have carried out the recent militant attacks like those at the capital’s Gulshan and Kishoreganj’s Sholakia. UNB and News Desk
