A detained operative of the banned militant outfit Harkatul Jihad (Huji) on Thursday said the organisation carried out the grenade attack on the Awami League (AL) rally at Derai in Sunamganj in June 2004.

Huji militant Hafez Arif Ahmed alias Naieem gave the information in his confessional statement before a first class magistrate in Sunamganj.

AL Presidium Member Suranjit Sengupta was speaking at the rally during the attack. The attack that was carried out one month after the grenade attack on British high commissioner to Dhaka in Sylhet killed an AL activist.

Court sources said Naieem was produced before Magistrate FROM PAGE 1

Hazera Khatun by police and Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) men. The magistrate recorded his statement for two hours when Naieem confessed his involvement with the banned militant outfit.

Naieem said he was introduced to Sharif Shamsul Alam Bipul in Sylhet in 2004. They later went to the house of Huji leader Mufti Hannan in Dhaka and worked out the blueprint for the grenade attacks in Sylhet and Sunamganj.

He said they were given five grenades. Keeping those with Bipul in Sylhet he went to his village home at Syedpur in Jagannathpur upazila of Sunamganj.

He said they met again a week later and drew a plan to carry out the grenade attacks. At his village house, an Imam of a local mosque asked him to carry out an attack on a shrine in Habiganj saying there was a fraud saint there.

He contacted Bipul and they decided not to deviate from their plan to attack the AL rally. However, they later gave a grenade to the Imam who exploded it at the Urs in the shrine.

In his confessional statement, Naieem also said after the grenade attack on the British high commissioner to Bangladesh on May 21, 2001, Bipul told him that they needed to divert the people's attention from the incident.

"You prepare to carry out the attack on Suranjit's rally," Naieem said in his statement quoting Bipul.

Naieem claimed he asked Bipul for a helping hand in the attack on Suranjeet. They later recruited Naziur Rahman Nazu, a student of Syedpur madrasa, and gave him two grenades. They told Nazu that the objective was to kill the AL leader in the interest of the Muslims.

Nazu hurled one grenade at the rally killing one AL activist. He failed to hurl the other grenade.