JMB TERRORIST INVESTIGATION MARCHES ON--UP TO A

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 04 DHAKA 002573 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/30/2016 TAGS: PTER KISL PGOV PHUM BG SUBJECT: JMB TERRORIST INVESTIGATION MARCHES ON--UP TO A POINT REF: 4/20/06 MCCULLOUGH-GASTRIGHT E-MAIL (NOTAL) Classified By: A/DCM D.C. McCullough, reason para 1.5 b, d. ¶1. (S) Summary. The BDG's pursuit of JMB crossed a huge threshold in April with the capture of the last two members of JMB's senior leadership body. Overall, some 693 alleged JMB activists have been arrested, 141 criminal cases have been filed, and 31 defendants have been convicted and sentenced, including 22 to death. DGFI hopes to stand up its new CT bureau by June, and draft AML and CT legislation is lurching forward. The Rapid Action Battalion emerged as the country's lead CT action unit. The BDG acknowledged that Bangla Bhai was not, as the Home Minister once famously claimed, a media fabrication. While the BDG's scorecard is impressive on the law enforcement side, it continues to deny that JMB was in any way motivated by Islamist ideology, and refuses to deal with widespread allegations that four senior BNP leaders godfathered the JMB "Frankenstein." The JMB's back really does look broken, at least until after the January 2007 election, but the conditions that spawned Bangladesh's first overt Islamist terrorist campaign have not materially changed. There is a strong possibility that the BDG will discover that the next terrorist menace in Bangladesh, either a reconstituted JMB or a new group, will be much harder to break. End Summary. Bangladesh Post-August 17 -------------- ¶2. (C) The approximately 459 coordinated small bomb blasts that rattled Bangladesh on August 17 initiated an interesting sequence of events: -- About two hundred lower-level JMB activists, including some bombers, were soon rounded up. After first denying that Jamaat ul-Mujahidin Bangladesh (JMB) had the capability to conduct a nationwide action, the BDG tagged JMB, theoretically banned in February 2005 for attacks on Bangladeshi NGOs, for organizing and conducting the blasts. Publicly and privately, BDG officials postulated that India and the opposition Awami League were behind JMB. To dilute the Islamist identity of JMB, one intelligence agency put out the incredible story that JMB was acting in concert with a faction of its long-time nemesis, the East Bengal Communist Party (PBCB). -- On October 1, RAB arrested in Dhaka the fugitive leader of Harakat ul-Jihad Bangladesh (HUJIB),Mufti Hanan, who sensationally told reporters he had been protected by Commerce Minister Chowdhury and other BNP leaders. -- After a long lull, on October 3 JMB struck again, this time fatally, with bomb attacks on three court houses in the Chittagong division that killed two persons and injured 38. -- In November, JMB attacks became bolder and more sophisticated to overcome police counter-measures. At least 55 "JMB" threats -- some obviously hoaxes but others chillingly authentic -- bombarded judges, lawyers, local government officials, police officers, Law Minister Ahmed, reporters, professors, universities, schools, and Bangladeshi NGOs. -- On November 14, Bangladesh's apparently first suicide bomber killed two judges. Panic spread in many parts of Bangladesh over the randomness of JMB violence and the BDG's inability to stop it. -- On November 20, police arrested Abdur Rahman's son-in-law, the first member of JMB's seven-man leadership council. Arrests of mid-level leaders intensified. -- On December 5, an independent Hindu candidate easily beat the Jamaat Islami (JI) candidate in a parliamentary by-election in the traditional JI bastion of Dinajpur. Observers attributed his shock win to voter anger over JI's perceived links to JMB. DHAKA 00002573 002 OF 004 -- On December 8, JMB's deadliest suicide attack killed six persons and injured 46 in Netrokona, the home constituency of Home Minister of State Babar. Until press reporting proved he was an innocent bystander, BDG officials described one of the fatalities as JMB's first Hindu suicide attacker -- another shameless attempt to de-Islamicize JMB. -- On March 2, JMB supremo Abdur Rahman surrendered after a long siege at a home in Sylhet. Four days later, Bangla Bhai was slightly wounded as he was taken into custody. -- On March 10, local media reported that JMB detainees had confessed to high-profile attacks in recent years on prominent intellectuals, cultural festivals, and in 2002 the four cinemas in Mymensingh, where 27 persons were killed. -- On April 26, RAB captured the last two remaining members at large of the JMB leadership council. The BDG Approach -------------- ¶3. (C) BDG determination to hunt down JMB leaders did not materialize until early November, when domestic political pressure, driven by escalating JMB attacks, demonstrated that the BDG's normal strategy for dealing with politically sensational attacks -- denial and procrastination -- was failing. Mounting pressure from Washington and other foreign capitals, plus public grumbling from several BNP MPs about their party's ties to JI, were other factors. The BDG organized civil society, including virtually every strand of organized Islam, to condemn JMB's actions as un-Islamic. The BDG continued to downplay the role of Islam, even a perversion of Islam, as a factor in JMB's actions because it feared such a linkage would intensify suspicion about BNP's politically expedient alliance with JI and IOJ. The BDG argued that because terrorism and suicide attacks are un-Islamic, JMB's agenda and motivation must also have no relation to Islam. Only India and the Awami League, the BNP said, benefited from JMB's campaign of violence. As evidence, officials like Home Minister of State Babar implicated a Sheikh Hasina confidant as an associate of Abdur Rahman; our own assessment of the evidence and conversation with the confidant did not appear to substantiate this claim. Babar, NSI DG Haider, and others argued that the bulk of JMB's bomb-making materials came not coincidentally from India, and that at least 60 percent of JMB detainees attended government, not madrassa, schools. ¶4. (C) The BDG's full-court press (police, RAB, NSI, DGFI) on JMB produced impressive results. According to police sources, they have netted over 693 alleged JMB activists since August 17, over 600 of whom are still in custody. Police have 96 current investigations and have filed 141 criminal cases. The six trials to date have produced 31 convictions and 22 death sentences, seven life terms, and one sentence of 15 years. ¶5. (C) The BDG insists that it is committed to pursuing the JMB investigation to the end, including those who funded and patronized the terrorists, but it refuses to address the widespread view that Bangla Bhai and Abdur Rahman enjoyed BNP protection and were recruited by four beleaguered BNP leaders in Rajshahi to wage a vigilante "Islamist" war against PBCB thugs. Those leaders are: Minister of Telecommunications (and reputed JI associate) Aminul Haq, Deputy Land Minister Ruhul Quddus Talukdar Dulu, State Minister for Housing and Public Works Alamgir Kabir, and MP Nadim Mostapha. PM Zia has told us that she would punish these or any other leaders after "proof" was presented of their guilt, her same stance in dealing with officials accused of corruption. Kabir's continuing prominence in the party was recently underscored by his inclusion in the BDG committee which in April negotiated an end to a popular uprising over power shortages in Kansat. What JMB Wrought -------------- DHAKA 00002573 003 OF 004 ¶6. (S) The JMB phenomenon produced several significant developments: A) The BDG acknowledged that counter-terrorism is a serious domestic challenge and not just a foreign policy principle, even if it mitigates its seriousness by saying it is fueled by foreign and domestic political antagonists. "We did not know they were there," PM Zia baldly told TIME magazine in April. "After the August 17 bomb blasts, we knew. And we cracked down on them." B) The controversial Rapid Action Battalion emerged as the BDG's lead CT strike unit, thereby further enhancing its local popularity as an aggressive law enforcer. Ironically, nearly 40 percent of RAB's total "cross-fire" victims have been members of PBCB, the group Bangla Bhai and Abdur Rahman were recruited to combat. Even though RAB was at the forefront in the JMB manhunt, it was never attacked or, to our knowledge, even threatened by JMB, which some attribute to the two groups having PBCB as a common enemy. AL president Hasina has even been compelled to state that her government would retain the force she has condemned as "killers" and "brown shirts." C) Home Minister of State Babar, who in 2004 famously dismissed Bangla Bhai as a media fabrication, has seen has political stock shoot up from the basement to the penthouse. He has grown greatly in his job, and emerged as a strong supporter of our bilateral law enforcement partnership. D) After years of resistance, PMO sanctioned the expansion of DGFI's CT wing to a CT bureau, which has tremendous implications for DGFI's ability to attract the right people and resources to be effective. DGFI expects to stand up the new bureau by June. E) The Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) draft was completed in October but awaits prior Cabinet approval on an Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA). The ATA would criminalize terrorist financing, and the AMLA would be the executing legislation for investigation and prosecution. However, it appears that neither act will be passed in 2006. in part because of shrinking legislative timeframes before the BNP hands over to a caretaker regime in September. Elsewhere, work continues on elevating a de facto Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) into a fully fledged group, perhaps in October, and the relevant ministries have promised to provide officials with appropriate expertise for a Financial Crimes Task Force. F) Allegations of JI links to JMB leaders -- all seven shura members were reportedly once in JI's student wing -- have put JI on the defensive and undermined its negotiating leverage with the BNP for seats in the upcoming election. Before the JMB phenomenon, JI amir Nizami boasted his party would get 100 tickets. Now, JI officials talk about 40. JMB Scorecard -------------- ¶7. (S) Progress is mixed. A) Law Enforcement: A-. The BDG has wildly surpassed early expectations that its investigation would bog down with the arrests of lower-level activists. Capturing nearly 700 JMB activists, including all shura members, and preventing any attack since December 8 seemed unlikely as late as early January. The BDG even took steps to shut down the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society local office alleged to have provided funds to JMB. B) International Cooperation: B. USG experts had good access to investigators and materials. Our requests for interrogation records of senior JMB leaders have produced informative if incomplete accounts. Disturbingly, though, the BDG did not share with us in November and December JMB threat information it developed involving Peace Corps volunteers near Dhaka. It did, however, let us to interview two senior JMB leaders, Jewel and Sunny, on that matter; DHAKA 00002573 004 OF 004 while both leaders were circumspect, they did basically validate the threat, and their arrests may have helped avert a tragedy. C) Building Institutional CT Capabilities: B-. Solid progress toward launching a DGFI CT bureau, and movement on promising AMLA and ATA drafts and creating a FIU. RAB emerged as an effective CT strike unit. D) Addressing JMB's Links to BNP, JI, or IOJ: F. No will to acknowledge an issue or rock the boat, especially in an election year. E) Addressing the Underlying Causes of Extremism: D. Unsolved crimes of extremist and political violence helped create an enabling climate for terrorism. There is no visible effort to solve those crimes, no recognition that religious extremism played a role in creating JMB, no new effort to improve government schools as an alternative to madrassas, and no public criticism of anti-Ahmadiyya bigots or others who act immoderately and intolerantly. Notably, the Islamist scholars the BDG organized to condemn JMB did so on the basis of JMB's tactics, not its goal of implementing sharia law. Looking Ahead -------------- ¶8. (S) The BDG's surprisingly strong scores on the law enforcement side indicate there is good potential for enhanced bilateral cooperation in CT and law enforcement, at least in moving it up to the next level. (Ref e-mail reviewed the capabilities of Bangladeshi law enforcement agencies, and proposed areas for bilateral engagement.) It also suggests we have dodged the nightmare scenario of a resurgent JMB during an already turbulent election campaign, which could have been catastrophic for the process. In a four-month period sandwiching the 2001 election, political violence killed 369 persons and injured nearly 17,000. ¶9. (S) The broader political challenges, however, are still daunting since the BDG has shown no interest in dealing with the root causes of extremist violence or their political patrons. JMB is a double-edged sword politically for the BNP, so the BNP cannot crow too loudly about its "breaking" JMB. Faced with growing political liabilities in the form of commodity price rises, acute fuel, power, and water shortages stemming from bad policies and failing infrastructure, and increasingly the perception of unbridled corruption at the top of the BNP, the BDG's biggest claim of success is general improvement in law and order via its creation of RAB. ¶10. (S) If the BNP wins the 2007 election, and its complacency grows that it has defeated terrorism in Bangladesh, the BDG may lose its CT focus -- until the next attack comes. Against JMB, the BDG faced an opponent that was relatively inexperienced and unsophisticated, particularly in withstanding setbacks like senior leaders who hemorrhaged information during interrogations. It also had the advantage of knowing the JMB's top leaders, several of whom had been previously arrested but then released by police because of their ties to BNP leaders. A reconstituted JMB or a new group, foreign or domestic, that is more resilient and more of an unknown to the BDG could be a much harder nut to crack. CHAMMAS