January 21, 2007	Sunday	Muharram 01, 1428

DHAKA, Jan 20: A separatist commander in northeast India confessed his group was behind an attack aimed at a former Bangladesh prime minister last year in which 20 died, a report said on Saturday.

Pallav Saikia, a commander with the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), reportedly told Assam police that his group lobbed grenades and fired rifles at an opposition Awami Legaue political rally in the Bangladesh capital on Aug 21, 2004, private news agency BDNews24.com said.

Assam police special branch chief Khagen Sarmah told BDNews24 that Pallav confessed they attacked the rally at the “explicit instruction” of ULFA military-wing chief Paresh Barua.

The Awami League said its leader Sheikh Hasina Wajed, who was the prime minister of Bangladesh between 1996 and 2001, was the target of the grenade attack, the deadliest Bangladesh had witnessed since its independence in 1971.

Indian authorities have blamed the outlawed ULFA for a four-day wave of attacks in Assam this month in which 73 people were killed – 61 of them Hindi-speaking migrant workers.

ULFA in the past has targetted migrants to the state, including from neighbouring Bangladesh, who it claims take jobs from locals.

The Bangladesh National Party (BNP) led the government at the time of the August 2004 incident.

It started a judicial probe into the carnage, but failed to solve the case, and rejected an opposition charge that it had been involved in the attack.

Saikia, who was arrested by Assam special branch police on Dec 14, reportedly said that a group of 11 fighters led by him carried out the attack, BDNews24 said.

“Some Bangladesh intelligence officials helped us plan the assault and even gave us the vehicles for the assault that morning, but I don’t know these Bangladeshis,” he was quoted as saying.

“They started interacting with us after Paresh Barua briefed me on the mission on July 26 in a safe house in Gulshan in Dhaka,” Saikia was quoted as saying during questioning.—AFP