Police said they belong to Hizb ut-Tahrir — a group that, as of April of this year, was still legal in Britain and Australia.
“Bangladesh arrests 10 suspected Islamic extremists,” from Agence France-Presse, September 19:
DHAKA (AFP) – Ten men with links to an Islamic radical group have been arrested in western Bangladesh on suspicion of promoting militancy in the country, a policeman said Friday.
Police officer Abbdus Sattar told AFP the men were arrested late Thursday after they were found to be distributing Islamic extremist literature in the western city of Rajshahi.
“We arrested them on suspicion of encouraging militancy in the country and we are investigating their activities,” he said.
“They were provoking unrest in the name of religion. They were encouraging people, in the name of Islam, to overthrow the government and establish khilafat here.”
He said the men belonged to the Bangladeshi chapter of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a global group that wants to combine all Muslim countries in a unitary Islamic state or “khilafat.”
Muslim-majority Bangladesh has been hit by a series of attacks by Islamic terror groups in recent years — including 400 blasts on just one day in August 2005 by the banned Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).