Bangladesh admits use of its soil for Mumbai attacks

Dhaka, Feb 19: Three months after the horrendous attack on Mumbai, Bangladesh, for the first time on Thursday, ‘officially’ admitted that terrorist outfits operating from its soil may also have been involved in the plot.
“The terrorist attacks that have been carried out within the region in the recent months, even in Mumbai, there is a cross-border linkage among all the terrorists,” The Daily Times quoted Bangladesh’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Hassan Memoud, as saying.
Memoud also accepted that the banned militant outfit, Harkatul Jihadul Islami, has its base in Bangladesh, and continues to function from there. He also claimed that the militants are being trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan before transported to Bangladesh for carrying out such attacks.
“Terrorists from outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Harkatul Jihad were trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan before coming to Bangladesh,” Memoud said. Incidentally, Pakistan has been suggesting the presence of an international network of terror operatives; who were actively involved in the planning of the Mumbai terror attacks.
Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had claimed that the banned Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (HuJI), which operates out of Bangladesh, may have played a role in the Mumbai terror strike. Besides the Bangladeshi connection, Pakistan had claimed that there were "clear indications that some of the planning for the attacks was done in Dubai and there is also an element of local Indian support.
Memoud’s acceptance of a plausible Eastern link to the Mumbai attacks, would for sure come as embarrassment to the Awami League-led government in Dhaka as it had been strongly condemning the Pakistani claim of links between a terror outfit in Bangladesh and the terrorists involved in Mumbai carnage. But, India had been all along not buying the Bangladeshi angle to the Mumbai attacks and had been calling it diversionary tactics of the Pakistani establishment.