DHAKA, Bangladesh — Safety officers in Bangladesh arrested the chief of a Rohingya insurgent group on expenses of unlawful entry, sabotage and terrorist actions within the South Asian nation, the place there are greater than 1 million Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar.
Police mentioned {that a} group of the Speedy Motion Battalion arrested Ataullah Abu Ammar Jununi, generally known as the commander-in-chief of Arakan Rohingya Salvation Military in a raid Tuesday in Narayanganj district close to the capital, Dhaka.
Jununi, a Pakistani-born Rohingya who grew up in Mecca, leads a gaggle that has performed assaults on officers in Myanmar as a part of what it describes as “a defensive battle with the brutal Burmese navy regime” on behalf of the Rohingya, who face discrimination and violence in Myanmar.
Bangladeshi intelligence says ARSA members have been concerned in focused killings, kidnappings, illicit medicine, smuggling and different critical crimes within the Rohingya refugee camps. Infighting and retaliatory assaults over management of the camps led to deaths of tons of of Rohingya.
Bangladesh’s Every day Star reported that 10 different group members, together with 4 kids and girls, have been additionally arrested in separate raids in Narayanganj and Mymensingh districts.
Shahinur Alam, a senior police official at Siddhirganj in Narayanganj, informed reporters that the officers additionally seized money, a knife, a pointy metal chain and 4 wristwatches throughout the raid.
A Justice of the Peace afterward Tuesday approved police to carry Jununi and 6 others for interrogation. 4 others have been despatched to jail.
Additional particulars on how Jununi got here to Bangladesh and the way he stayed within the nation remained unclear.
ARSA was shaped in 2016 by Rohingya exiles dwelling in Saudi Arabia, in accordance with the Worldwide Disaster Group, and is led by Jununi and a committee of about 20 Rohingya emigres. ICG says there are indications Jununi and others obtained militant coaching in Pakistan and presumably Afghanistan.
Successive governments in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar have denied the Rohingya primary rights and citizenship, deeming most of them to be international invaders from Bangladesh, though Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for generations.
For many years, Bangladesh has sheltered greater than 1 million Rohingya refugees, together with greater than 700,000 who crossed the border into Bangladesh in 2017 when Myanmar launched a violent clearance operation in its Rakhine state. One other 70,000 arrived in Bangladesh final 12 months whereas 1000’s of recent infants are born yearly in dozens of sprawling camps within the nation.
The scenario in Myanmar has remained risky after one other group — Arakan Army — took management over the Rakhine state from the place Rohingya refugees arrived in Bangladesh.
