Bangladesh arrest suspected Lashkar-i-Taiba militants

Bangladeshi police arrest a Pakistani national suspected of being the main coordinator for the banned militant group.

DHAKA: Bangladeshi police said on Monday they had arrested a Pakistani national suspected of being the main local coordinator for the banned militant group Lashkar-i-Taiba.

The 41-year-old Khurram, who uses only one name but also goes by the alias Mohammad Selim, is believed to have visited Bangladesh frequently to coordinate the local operations of the Pakistan-based group, police said. "He is a top member of LeT. We arrested him along with two associates from a hotel in the capital Dhaka on Saturday," detective police assistant commissioner Golam Azad told AFP. "We have arrested six other LeT members in recent months who all identified him as their main coordinator in Bangladesh," Azad said, adding that Khurram had also sought out Bangladeshi militant groups to work with LeT.

The Pakistan-based militant group is blamed for the 2008 attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai. Last week Bangladesh's elite Rapid Action Battalion said they arrested another LeT militant from a rented house in the country's central Narayanganj district. Militant groups such as Pakistan-based Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI) and the homegrown Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) are banned in Bangladesh and have been the targets of a massive government crackdown in the last year.

In November last year, Bangladeshi police arrested three suspected Pakistani Lashkar-i-Taiba operatives who were accused of plotting to attack US and Indian targets in the capital Dhaka.