DHAKA: Bangladesh police have arrested the leader of an Islamist organisation at his hideout in Dhaka, officers said on Saturday, months after the launch of a crackdown against the group.

Shamin Mahfuz, the founder of Jamaat al Ansar fil Hindal Sharqiya, is accused of helping to run militant training camps in the country’s restive Chittagong Hill Tracts.

Police said Mahfuz was arrested late on Friday along with his wife in an industrial suburb of the capital, where they were found with a pistol, explosives and bomb-making materials.

“An anti-terrorism case has been filed against Mahfuz. We seek 10 days of remand to question him,” Mohammad Asaduzzaman of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism unit told reporters. Lawyers for Mahfuz could not be reached for comment.

Asaduzzaman said the Sharqiya founder had first been detained in 2014 and came into contact with other outlawed extremist groups while in prison.

He said Mahfuz had brokered a deal for the organisation to use training camps run by the Kuki-Chin National Front (KNF), a mainly Christian tribal insurgent group.

Last October the country’s elite Rapid Action Battalion security force said it had launched an assault on KNF and Sharqiya encampments in three remote hill towns near the Indian border, arresting dozens of people.

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2023