AhlulBayt News Agency

source : Dhakatribune
Tuesday

7 February 2017

8:51:24 AM
810021

9 men charged in Bangladeshi Shia mosque attack

A Bogra court has taken into cognisance the charges pressed against nine militants for the gun attack on a Shia mosque in Bogra in 2015 that killed its muezzin.

(AhlulBayt News Agency) - At least 13 trained members of banned militant outfit JMB and Jamaat’s radical student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir took part in the November 26 attack when the devotees were saying their evening prayers at Al-Mostafa Shia mosque at Haripur village under Shibganj of Bogra.

The charge sheet was submitted to the court maintaining strict secrecy on January 18.

Judge Mohammad Qamruzzaman of the Bogra’s Cognisance Court accepted the charge sheet Sunday and set March 8 for the hearing on charge framing.

Five of the accused are on the run. Of the four arrestees, key accused Yasin Ali gave confessional statement. Four other militants involved in the attack were killed in gunfights with the police during raids in June-July 2016.

Muezzin Moazzem Hossain, 70, was killed and at least three others sustained bullet injuries in the attack when the terrorist used an AK22 rifle.

International terrorist group ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, but the government insists that the attackers were members of a new faction of local militant group JMB, which was banned in 2005.

It was the eighth attack carried out by ISIS supporters in Bangladesh since September 2015. So far, ISIS took credit for 26 attacks including the Gulshan Holey Artisan Bakery attack that killed 24 people, mostly foreigners.

The same group of militants was also involved in the grenade attack on a procession at Dhaka’s Hussaini Dalan on October 24, 2015 that killed two people and injured more than 100 others; and the murder of Shia preacher Abdur Razzaq of Kaliganj in Jhenaidah on March 14, 2016.

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