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Anti-terror unit of police awaits rules

Shariful Islam
The newly formed Anti-Terrorism Unit is expected to start operation within months with a countrywide mandate, using most of the manpower, resources and logistics of the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police.
"We expect the rules for the unit will be approved in a couple of months. Once the rules are in place, the ATU will start operation and the CTTC unit of DMP will be dissolved,” Additional Inspector General of Police Shafiqul Islam, chief of the ATU, told The Daily Star recently.
The Police Headquarters last month sent draft rules for the ATU to the home ministry, which approved the formation of the 581-member unit on September 19 last year.
After the dissolution of CTTC, the DMP will have a small anti-militancy team under a different name.
Formed in December 2015, the CTTC is the only specialised counterterrorism unit of the police. It needs special permission from the Police Headquarters to launch antimilitancy raids outside Dhaka metropolitan area.
The ATU will run independently with the jurisdiction to operate countrywide, unlike the Cl TC unit.
Although it will be based in Dhaka, the ATU having all modern facilities will be able to launch operations in remote areas of the country at short notice.
All metropolitan and district police will be legally bound to assist the ATU. In future, it will have offices in metropolitan cities, said sources.
Officials at the Police Headquarters said the government has already allocated Tk 350 crore that will be spent for infrastructural development of the unit, purchase of modern equipment and software to combat militancy, and for
de-radicalisation programmes in jail.
Apart from investigating cases relating to militancy and terror financing, the unit will take measures for de-radicalisation of militants in jails, said Additional Inspector General Shafiqul.
All militants now scattered at different cells and prisons across the country would be kept at a certain place. Divided into groups, they would be "de-radicalised" with the help of psychologists, religious scholars and other experts, he added.
A top militant suspect who was released from jail upon bail recently, and the mother of another suspected militant who is now in prison said at a programme that militants were getting more radicalised in prisons.
According to Police Headquarters statistics, law enforcers arrested 779 suspected militants of different outfits from January 2016 till September last year.
During the same period, 564 militant suspects, who were accused in 292 cases, walked out of jail on bail, the statistics revealed.
According to the draft rules, all the cases already filed under the AntiTerrorism Act, except for those being probed by Rab, will be transferred to the ATU.
Cases relating to terror financing and robbery or embezzlement by militants to collect funds will also be investigated by the ATU, according to the draft rules.
The unit members would not face any legal action for anything they would do in good faith during antimilitancydrives.
For example, during drive against militants in their den an innocent might be killed. In such cases the force members should not face any legal action, Shafiqul said.
The chief of CTTC unit Monirul Islam will work as the deputy to Shafiqul while
the ATU unit will also have an additional DIG and eight superintendents of police.
Initially, the ATU will use the building constructed recently for CTTC unit on the Detective Branch office premises in the capital.
It will move to Agargaon after completion of its own high-rise buildings on two-acre government land there, it will move there, said the ATU chief.