DHAKA, Feb 23, 2021 (BSS) – Anti-crime elite force Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) today arrested a fugitive convict in the August 21 grenade attack case from city’s Diabari area .
A team of RAB with the help the National Security Intelligence (NSI) arrested Md Iqbal Hossain alias Iqbal alias Jahangir alias Selim from Diabari area here at about 3 am, RAB Director General (DG) Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun told a press briefing today.
He said the arrestee was a member of the banned militant outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad Bangladesh (Huji) and an inhabitant of Jhenaidah.
In the primary interrogation, the DG said Iqbal confessed his direct involvement in taking part in the August 21 grisly grenade attack.
According to RAB, Iqbal had a very close link with the Huji chief Mufti Abdul Hannan. He was involved with Jatiyabadi Chhatra Dal (JCD) in 1994 in Jhenaidah. He joined Huji in 2001 and met Mufti Hannan in 2003.
He left Bangladesh in 2008 and at the end of 2020, Iqbal was sent back from a foreign country where he was staying illegally, the DG added.
Iqbal was sentenced to life in prison by a Dhaka Speedy Trial Tribunal in the August 21 grenade attack case.
On October 10, 2018, a court here sentenced 19 persons to death and 19 others to life imprisonment in connection with the case .
At least 24 people were killed and around 300 injured in the gruesome attack on an Awami League rally on the capital’s Bangabandhu Avenue on August 21, 2004.
Awami League President Sheikh Hasina, the then opposition leader in parliament, narrowly escaped the attack with severe ear injury.