Dhaka, May 19 (IANS) A banned Myanmarese insurgent group has been training Bangladesh’s Islamist militants since the 1980s, a newspaper report said Tuesday.
Banned Bangladeshi outfit Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) has had close links with the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), an insurgent group operating in the Arakan state of Myanmar, JMB’s explosives’ expert ‘Boma’ Mizan revealed during interrogation. Mizan was arrested May 14.

Interrogators of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) said Mizan and some other JMB operatives received training from RSO arms experts in a camp near the Myanmar border.

This was arranged by the JMB chief Shaekh Abdur Rahman, who was executed after being convicted for murder. In exchange for the firearms lessons, JMB trained Rohingyas to improvise and set off bombs, The Daily Star newspaper said.

Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (HuJI) Bangladesh, another outlawed Islamist outfit, had strong connections with RSO.

“Mizan said the training by RSO was conducted somewhere in Chittagong hill tracts and lasted 10 days. He has yet to give further details,” an investigator told The Daily Star.

A Chittagong court is currently hearing a case of an aborted shipment of arms and ammunition, purchased from China and meant for the Indian insurgent group, United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA).