Hasan Mahmud tells CNN-IBN
Star Report
Bangladesh has for the first time admitted that its territory and porous borders may have been used by terrorist groups to target India and says it is committed to acting against them.
The Harkat-ul-Jehad (Huji), the anti-Indian militant group, continues to function in Bangladesh though it has been banned, admitted Hasan Mahmud, state minister for foreign affairs.
Mahmud, in an exclusive interview to CNN-IBN, said Huji “definitely” exists in Bangladesh despite a ban on it. “They are banned, but they are in hideouts now,” he said.
Asked whether the Bangladesh Government was trying to trace Huji hideouts, Mahmud said: “definitely, we are trying to find out their locations.”
Mahmud said Bangladesh was willing to hand over United Liberation Front of Asom leader Anup Chetia, who has been in a Bangladeshi jail since 1996, to India. “We have mutually agreed on the handover; now we have to decide on the formalities of how to handover. It will also include handover of Bangladeshi criminals who have fled to India,” he said.
The minister promised a crackdown on militant groups and alleged terrorists in the South Asian region had “cross-border linkages”.
A “crackdown will indeed happen because terrorist attacks, which have been happening in the region in the past few months, even in Mumbai, there are cross-border linkages of these terrorists. Not only Lashkar (Laskhar-e-Toiba) and Huji, but other terror organisations also. They (were) trained in Afghanistan, they were in Pakistan (and) then they came here,” he said.
Courtesy of www.thedailystar.net
