Dhaka, Bangladesh - Bangladeshi authorities have arrested the leader of a banned Islamic militant group as part of a crackdown in the Muslim-majority South Asian nation, police said Wednesday.
Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), which wants secular Bangladesh to adopt sharia law, the Islamic legal code, was banned in 2005 for a series of suicide bombings that left 24 people dead.
Since coming to power in December 2008 elections, the secular Awami League government has launched a drive to weed out militancy that has led to a string of arrests of top JMB leaders.
Tuesday's arrest of Anwarul Alam, alias Bhagne Shahid, comes just two months after he took over as head of the group following the May arrest of Maolana Saidur Rahman, who was then chief of the group.
"We arrested Bhagne Shahid in northern Bogra district late Tuesday as he was travelling by bus," Bogra police chief Humayun Kabir told, adding Shahid already faced 20 years in prison.
Shahid was convicted in absentia for direct involvement in a string of attacks, including the 2004 attempted murder of liberal Bangladeshi writer Humayun Azad, attacks on police stations and bank robberies, Kabir said.
The JMB and its spinoffs have targeted secular politicians, intellectuals, music concerts and popular sufi shrines in Bangladesh -- all of which they have branded "anti-Islamic".
More than 1,000 members of local Islamic militant groups have been arrested since 2005.