Bangladesh government on Thursday pointed fingers at the outlawed militant outfit JMB in connection with last month's mutiny in the paramilitary force BDR which killed 73 Army officers, even as sleuths from FBI and Scotland Yard joined the probe to look for the masterminds behind the bloody revolt.
"Not all BDR (Bangladesh Rifles) men were involved (in the mutiny) ...and some JMB (Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh) links have been found," commerce minister Lt Col (Retd) Faruq Khan said here.
Khan, who heads a high-power committee to coordinate the foreign and local investigations into the February 25-26 carnage at the BDR headquarters here, did not elaborate on the suspected militant links.
However, he said a "dangerous conspiracy is going on to destroy the development of the country".
An official familiar with the investigation, meanwhile, said preferring anonymity that they found clues of past links of several of the suspected BDR rebels in custody with JMB.
Their comments came as US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and British Scotland Yard joined hands with Bangladeshi investigators to probe the 33-hour mutiny.
Investigators earlier said they suspected that outsiders in uniform took part in the massacre of army officers serving the paramilitary force on deputation as BDR soldiers, who reported back to work on a government order, claimed "masked" men forced them to join them in staging the mutiny.
The revolt followed an intensified anti-militancy campaign by the government in which several of the slain officers had made significant contributions.
Several officers, who survived the mutiny, had told newsmen that at the very onset of the revolt, the assailants were looking for Colonel Gulzaruddin Ahmed, who had recently joined BDR after leading the campaign against the outlawed extremist outfits for year as an officer of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). Ahmed was among those killed in the revolt.
Bangladesh has witnessed the growth of several Islamist militant outfits, including JMB and Harkatul Jihad (HuJI), in the past one decade.
Six top JMB kingpins, including its chief Shaikh Abdur Rahman, had been executed while HuJI chief Mufty Abdul Hannan and a number of other members of his militant group were arrested to face justice.
Officials had earlier said the anti-militancy campaign had broken the backbone of these outfits but their remnants could still regroup unless a social campaign was launched against religious extremism along side the security vigil.
Security agencies had launched the anti-militant clampdown after a grenade explosion at a police station in suburban Gazipur, leading to the arrest of JMB's chief coordinator Motasim alias Basir along with seven other suspected operatives of the outfit.
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina had recently issued orders to uproot militancy and track down their patrons and funding sources in the country in line with her election pledges while the Cabinet approved a tough anti-terrorism ordinance suggesting capital punishment of terrorists after speedy trials in special tribunals.
State minister for foreign affairs Hassan Mahmoud last week admitted that terrorist outfits with alleged cross-border links still existed in the country despite years of massive anti-terrorism campaigns.
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