October 16: Bangladeshi police has found that the 25 suspected Rohingya militants of Myanmar arrested in the southern Chittagong port on Friday have close links with some local Islamic militant groups, including the Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

The Detective Branch (DB) of police in its report for the remand of the 25 mentioned that the detainees have long been involved in subversive activities in collusion with their Bangladeshi allies like JMB, The Daily Star reported Sunday.

The DB report placed before a Chittagong court also said the 25 had supplied bombs and explosives to the outfits held responsible for bomb attacks in different parts of the country including the ” 8.17″ countrywide bomb blasts in which three people were killed and over 150 others injured.

Police arrested more than 400 suspects after the “8.17″ bomb blasts, most of them are members of the banned JMB.

The DB police placed charges against the 25 Rohingyas of staying illegally in Bangladesh, plotting against the interest of the country and maintaining links to the banned JMB.

A DB police team on Friday evening raided the office of the Chittagong Research and Cultural Society (CRCS) in the port city and made the arrest. CRCS reportedly is an organization of the Rohingya community.

After the arrest, they all were detained at DB office and interrogated by the intelligence personnel.

The DB police in the charges brought against the arrestees said they all have come from different Rohingya refugee camps in the south eastern Cox’s Bazar and Teknaf and belong to Myanmar-based insurgent groups.

The Rohingyas, who are Muslims and speak the same language as the people in Chittagong area, are not regarded by the government of Myanmar as an indigenous race.

Hundreds of thousands of them fled across the border to Bangladesh in 1978 and 1991-1992, and militant groups soon emerged among the refugees.

The United Nations eventually intervened and most of the Rohingyas were repatriated to Myanmar. However, more than 20,000 remained in United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) supervised camps in Cox’s Bazar. But quite a few Rohingyas live outside the UNHCR’s camps, and it is among these destitute and stateless people that various Islamist militant groups have found fertile ground for recruitment.