Security officials arrested the leader of a Rohingya insurgent group on charges of illegal entry, sabotage and terrorist activities in the South Asian nation, where there are more than one million Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Myanmar.
Police said that a team of the Rapid Action Battalion arrested Ataullah Abu Ammar Jununi, known as the commander-in-chief of Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa) in a raid Tuesday in Narayanganj district near the capital, Dhaka.
Jununi, a Pakistani-born Rohingya leads a group that has conducted attacks on officials in Myanmar as part of what it describes as “a defensive war with the brutal Burmese military regime” on behalf of the Rohingya, who face discrimination and violence in Myanmar.
Bangladeshi intelligence says Arsa members have been involved in targeted killings, kidnappings, illicit drugs, smuggling and other serious crimes in the Rohingya refugee camps.
Infighting and retaliatory attacks over control of the camps led to deaths of hundreds of Rohingya.
Bangladesh’s Daily Star reported that 10 other group members, including four children and women, were also arrested in separate raids in Narayanganj and Mymensingh districts.
Shahinur Alam, a senior police official at Siddhirganj in Narayanganj, told reporters that the officials also seized cash, a knife, a sharp steel chain and four wristwatches during the raid.
A magistrate later on Tuesday authorised police to hold Jununi and six others for interrogation. Four others were sent to prison.
Further details on how Jununi came to Bangladesh and how he stayed in the country remained unclear.
Arsa was formed in 2016 by Rohingya exiles living in Saudi Arabia, according to the International Crisis Group, and is led by Jununi and a committee of about 20 Rohingya emigres.
For decades, Bangladesh has sheltered more than one million Rohingya refugees, including more than 700,000 who crossed the border into Bangladesh in 2017 when Myanmar launched a violent clearance operation in its Rakhine state.
Thousands of new babies are born every year in dozens of sprawling camps in the country. — AP
