JMB’s mini bomb-making factory busted in city

The Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) yesterday morning busted a ‘mini-munitions factory’ of banned Islamist outfit Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) at the city’s East Monipur in Mirpur, and recovered a huge cache of bombs and bomb-making materials.
They carried out the raid following up information obtained from detained JMB explosives expert ‘Boma Mizan’ and his wife Sharmin.
Mizan was captured from Taltola on Thursday evening, and a few hours afterwards his wife was picked up from their rented house at Pirerbagh in Mirpur.
Sharmin, who tried to blow herself up when a Rab team went to arrest her, is now undergoing treatment at Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH). She lost one of her wrists in the blast that also wounded their two-year-old boy Saifullah Sukaine Naim and a little over two-month-old daughter Masroba Jannat Tora. The kids too have been admitted to DMCH.
Rab officials said they recovered 11 bombs, a pistol, and a huge stash of chemical residues, plastic explosives, grenade casings, fuses and detonators from the East Monipur flat that was also rented by Mizan.
The seized materials could be used to make at least 1,000 bombs, they observed.
Rab intelligence Director Major Azim Ahmed, who led the drives yesterday and the day before, said, “In fact, the flat was housing a mini-munitions factory. The chemicals and other materials recovered from there could even be used to improvise land and anti-personnel mines.”
Muyeen, a youth who had been living in the house, managed to flee, sensing the Rab swoop that began at around 7:45am and continued till 2:30pm.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner AKM Shahidul Haque, Rab Additional Director General Col Reza Noor Rahman Khan and some other high officials of the police and the elite crime-busting unit have visited the scene.
Chand Miah, owner of the Monipur flat, said Mizan introduced himself as a private firm employee, and said that he hailed from Barisal.
Miah rented out the flat to him on December 1 last year for Tk 5,000 a month.
Caretaker of the building Emdadul Huq said, “Mizan, together with his wife, son and younger brother Chhotu, lived in the house till April 1. He moved his family from here on the pretext of sending them to village home so they did not have to suffer from water crisis.”
“Only Chhotu stayed, and his brother would visit him from time to time,” he continued. “Mizan appeared to be a punctual office-goer. He would go out by 8:00am and return by 5:00pm every day.”
Razia Begum, who lives next door, said, “We often saw Mizan and the youth, but never a woman.”
Talking to The Daily Star at DMCH, Sharmin said she knew all along that her husband was involved in JMB, and that the outfit was paying for the running of their family.
She said her husband taught her how to charge grenades and shoot a pistol.
Asked about the bombs, hand-made grenades and the pistol recovered from their Pirerbagh house, she said Mizan brought those there some 15 days ago.
Replying to another query, she said she exploded the bomb in an attempt to commit suicide. An understanding to that end was reached between the husband and wife long before their capture.
Mizan came to the law enforcers’ notice sometime after the nationwide serial blasts on August 17, 2005. He joined the militant group in 2001 and soon developed close relations with executed militant kingpins Shaekh Abdur Rahman and Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai.
In 2003, he was arrested at Jhikargachha of Jessore, but came out on bail after three months. Since then he had been on the run.
A Chittagong court sentenced him to 20 years’ rigorous imprisonment for the bomb attack on a judge in 2005. He was tried in absentia.

Courtesy of The Daily Star