'Top Pak LeT militant nabbed in Bangladesh'

Bangladesh's elite security force on Thursday arrested a Pakistani national suspected to be a top leader of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayiba who was operating in Bangladesh in the guise of a businessman, an official said.

"His name is Mobasser Shahid Mubin alias Yahia. We arrested him from the citys Chankharpool area on Thursday morning after being under our intelligence vigil for the past several weeks," said Commander Mohammad Sohail, the spokesman of the Rapid Action Battalion.

Sohail told PTI that Yahia was the second suspected Pakistani militant to be arrested by RAB in weeks after the detention of an operative of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed.

26-year old Yahia told the RAB officials that he was involved with Pakistan-based LeT since 1989. The outfit had sent him to Bangladesh in 1998 with a mission to 'motivate and recruit Bangladeshi youths for LeT.'

He was operating in the country as an executive. "Yahia told us that LeT trained him in three phases. He is an expert gun-runner along with his other skills as an organiser," Sohail said.

The militant, who had been earlier arrested four years ago in a case related to counterfeit currency, had managed to came out on bail. Last week a media report said some 15 foreign rightwing militant groups were active in Bangladesh.

They used the territory mainly for transit to neighbouring India. It listed the organisations as Pakistan-based LeT, Tehrik-e-Jehad-e-Islami-Kashmiri, Harkat-ul Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Jehadul Islami, Hizb-ul Mujahideen, Hezbe Islami, Jamiatul Mujahideen, Harkatul Ansar, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, Jaish-e-Mohammed, India-based Asif Reza Commando Force, Myanmar-based militant groups Rohingya Solidarity Organisation, Arakan Rohingya National Organization and National United Party of Arakan.

The report said the militant organisations operated almost undisturbed from 1991 to 1998 and then between 2001 and 2005, coinciding with periods when Bangladesh's largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami played a key role in the government-led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

The RAB had confirmed the presence of the militant outfits, saying they were largely patronised by Pakistani intelligence agencies and supported by the Bangladesh-based Harkatul Jihad.