Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh | |
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Founders | Bangla Bhai Shaykh Abdur Rahman |
Leader | Bangla Bhai, Shaykh Abdur Rahman and several others |
Dates of operation | 1998–present |
Ideology | Islamism Islamic fundamentalism |
Status | Active |
Size | 10,000 members[1] |
Battles and wars | Internal conflict in Bangladesh Maoist insurgency in Bangladesh Bangladesh drug war |
Designated as a terrorist group by |
Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen ("Assembly of Mujahideen--Bangladesh", abbreviated: JMB; Bengali: জামাত-উল-মুজাহিদীন বাংলাদেশ) is a terrorist organisation operating in Bangladesh. It is listed as a terror group by Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, The United Kingdom and Australia.[3][4][5] It was founded in April 1998 in Palampur in Dhaka Division by Abdur Rahman[6][7] and gained public prominence in 2001 when bombs and documents detailing the activities of the organisation were discovered in Parbatipur in Dinajpur district.[8] The organisation was officially declared a terrorist organisation and banned by the government of Bangladesh in February 2005 after attacks on NGOs. But it struck back in mid-August when it detonated 500 small bombs at 300 locations throughout Bangladesh.[9] The group re-organised and has committed several public murders in 2016 in northern Bangladesh as part of a wave of attacks on secularists.[10]
The JMB was believed to have contained at least 10,000 members,[1] and have an extensive network of organisations,[11] including connections to legal Islamist organisations.[12] Six of the top leaders of JMB were captured by the RAB security forces in 2005. After being tried and convicted in court, on the evening of 29 March 2007, four were executed by hanging for the killing of two judges and for the August 2005 bombings.[13]
In two separate incidents in 2015, it was discovered that JMB had been receiving financing from officers at the Pakistan High Commission in Dhaka. Visa Attache, Mazhar Khan, was caught red-handed at a meeting with a JMB operative in April 2015, who said that they were involved in pushing large consignments of fake Indian currency into West Bengal and Assam.[14] Second Secretary, Farina Arshad, was expelled by Bangladesh in December 2015 after a JMB operative admitted to having received 30,000 Taka from her.[15]
An offshoot of the group, the Neo-Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, effectively operates as the ISIL in Bangladesh.[16][17]