DHAKA: As Bangladesh prepares to hang six militants convicted of masterminding fatal bombings, a close associate arrested last week said about 5,000 members of banned Islamist groups were still active in the country.
Mostafizur Rahman Shahin, detained in northern district Pabna on March 14, gave the information under interrogation by security and intelligence agencies, police said on Wednesday. Shahin confessed to being a senior member of the outlawed Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, led by Shayek Abdur Rahman. Another banned militant group active in Bangladesh is Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, headed by Siddikul Islam Bangla Bhai.
Both Bangla Bhai and Shayek, along with four other Islamist militants, are likely to be executed within weeks, police said. They were sentenced to death last year for masterminding countrywide bomb attacks in late 2005, which killed at least 30 people. The victims included judges, lawyers and police.
The Islamists are fighting to introduce sharia law in mainly Muslim Bangladesh, and threatened to strike again even if their leaders were hanged, police said. Police said security was tightened around the country of more than 140 million in view of the threat, but gave no details. Bangladesh's army-backed interim government, headed by former central bank chief Fakhruddin Ahmed, is planning to enact a law to ban any group linked to Islamist militants or other terror groups.
Shahin told interrogators Islamist militants in Bangladesh received money from sources overseas, including in the United States and Saudi Arabia, police said.
Muslim pupils kill teacher
22mar07
MUSLIM pupils at a secondary school in northeastern Nigeria beat a teacher to death today after accusing her of desecrating the Koran. Oluwatoyin Olusase, a Christian, was adjudicating an Islamic Religious Knowledge exam at the school in Gombe state when the incident occurred. The students attacked her outside the school compound after the exam and killed her, witnesses said.
It was not clear exactly what Olusase had done that angered the students. Police confirmed the killing and said their intervention had prevented the incident from turning into a riot. "We have received information that a female teacher has been lynched by her students. We are investigating the report," Gombe state police commissioner Joseph Ibi said.
Excerpted
http://www.ntnews.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,21426086%255E1702,00.html
PESHAWAR: Forty-two Uzbeks militants and 16 tribespeople were killed in two days of fierce clashes in the volatile South Waziristan tribal region, government and security officials told Dawn. They said another 27 Uzbek militants had been captured by tribal militant commander Maulvi Nazir.
There was no independent confirmation of the death toll on both sides but information gathered from three different government security sources corroborate reports emerging from the restive region that the tribespeople who had once whole-heartedly welcomed foreign militants were now on a hunting spree for them. Officials said announcements were made from mosques on loudspeakers in some villages in Wana, regional headquarters of South Waziristan, exhorting local tribespeople to stand up and wage a “jihad” against Uzbeks.
SNIP: The latest flare-up, the second this month, occurred after the killing of an Al Qaeda-linked Arab identified as Saiful Adil last week. His body was found abandoned in the outskirts of Wana. Maulavi Nazir, a top pro-Taliban militant commander in Wana region, suspected Uzbeks for their involvement in the murder. The security official said a foreign militant and his tribal escort carrying blood money to the widow of Saiful Adil were also attacked on their way which added fuel to the fire.
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http://www.dawn.com/2007/03/21/top1.htm
French official fired for opposing opening of Muslim high school
March 21, 2007
PARIS -- A senior, regional, education official was fired here Wednesday for strongly expressing opposition to the opening of a new Muslim school in the second largest city in France.
The Al-Kindi high school, located in the suburbs of the south-eastern city of Lyon, opened earlier this month after a long fight with the head of city education authority. French Muslims accused the official of being racist against Islam especially after he had tried to stop the school from opening three times, only conceded after national authorities in Paris intervened in the issue. Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope said that the official was fired as "his behaviour was not that of a senior official, whose task is to carry out government policy".
Excerpted
http://www.kuna.net.kw/Home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=963901