U.S. Government Assisting Bangladesh Terrorism Investigation and Securing Radioactive Materials
By Andrew Cochran
How important were the captures of JMB terrorist leaders Abdur Rahman and Bangla Bhai in the past week? Important enough for the Treasury Department to send two top experts to Bangladesh this week to determine how JMB was financed and to set up measures to prevent and detect movements of terrorists' money, including establishing Bangladesh's first financial intelligence unit (FIU). Here's an excerpt from today's "Daily Star":
US Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Senior Research Analyst Mary Jo Melancon and Senior Intelligence Research Specialist Kristen J King, who arrived here last week, have already sat with Bangladesh Bank (BB) officials on Monday and Tuesday.
Today they will illustrate and orient a select group of police, judicial, customs and central bank officials to how FinCEN operates to safeguard the US financial system from abuses and crimes like terrorist financing and money laundering, BB sources said.
The Washington-Dhaka high-level cooperation to clip the wings of the Islamist terrors comes concurrently with the recent captures of the top two JMB masterminds and the government's inability so far to unearth the sources and ways of their funds.
The "Bangladesh Observer" reports that the U.S. signed a cooperative agreement Wednesday to secure Bangladesh's radioactive materials from possible terrorist attack and takeover. That paper also reports that Abdur Rahman "spent a huge amount of money for launching several bomb attacks including the countrywide serial bomb blasts on August 17, 2005 with the help of the said persons. The money that he received from different local and international sources for launching militancy in the country were deposited by them in fake names and addresses." Bangla authorities have found checkbooks, raided businesses, and arrested a bank branch manager as part of the investigation. Bangla authorities continue hunting for two other top JMB terrorists, and Australia has offered its anti-terrorist financing software expertise, which is among the best in the world.
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