Dhaka: Outlawed terror group Jama'atul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) has prepared a list to assassinate 12 prominent politicians mostly belonging to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's ruling Awami League, officials said on Thursday.
"We've received a hit list of 10 to 12 important persons including top political figure. We're verifying the information... the people on the list are very important in the government," police chief of the northwestern Bogra
Humayun Kabir told reporters yesterday.
Kabir, however, declined to disclose their names in JMB hit list "without being absolutely sure" as interrogations of acting chief of the outfit Anwar Alam Khoka also known as Nazmul and Bhagne Shahid was underway on a five-day remand in custody three days after his arrest from the district on a secret tip off.
"It's a highly sensitive issue," he said when asked if Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina too was in the hit list but added that during initial interrogations Khoka told investigators that they were proceeding with a 10-year "master plan".
Hasina in the past narrowly escaped at least two assassination attempt with the last one being the August 17, 2005 grenade attack on a party rally which she was addressing in Dhakaand another militant outfit Harkatul Jihahad al Islami (HuJI) is said to have carried out the attacks.
Bangladesh witnessed the growth of several Islamist militant outfits including JMB and Harkatul Jihad al Islami in the past one decade while they carried out a series of terrorist attacks to establish the Islamic state of their brands claiming several hundred lives in the last several years.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, July 15, 2010, 15:08