Fidayeens trained,initiated after nerve-racking tests: investigators

“A Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh operative must pass a nerve-racking test of readiness to blow himself up to qualify as a full-time member of the banned Islamist outfit,” the Daily Star newspaper,quoting an investigator familiar with the process of pumping out information from the detained JMB operatives,reported on Tuesday.

It said JMB does not introduce a fresher to the simulation until it was convinced he would not harm the organisation even if he leaves it after some time. Also,before an entrant goes on the suicide mission,he undergoes sessions designed to motivate him to lay down his life for ‘jihad’.

The mock test is part of a three-day exclusive training,where the trainees do not know if the mission is for real or not,the investigators said.

“To be inducted as a full-timer (Ehsar),operatives have to distance themselves from worldly concerns. They are taught to consider life and family as matters of secondary importance,” an investigator said.

During the simulation,he said,the trainees have bombs strapped around their bodies and are asked to walk a few hundred yards with a warning that bombs may go off any time in the next 30 minutes,while trainers keep the remote control in their hand.

During these three days,trainees attend classes where the ideologues imbue them with strong motivations for ‘jihad’ and once the theory sessions are over,the trainees go through a stringent regimen of physical exercises along with weapon training.

Each of them must also do a stint as a rickshaw-puller as JMB leaders believe that this keeps the new recruits in touch with the masses and purges them of conceit.

On completion of the course,the trainers recommend who among their subjects should be full-timers and who part-timers (Gayeri Ehsar),the report said.

Investigators said JMB usually chooses recruits from the relatives and friends they think were cut out for the outfit but takes as high as one year to observe a target recruit to assess if he could be inducted as an operative.

The Star report comes two days after security forces arrested five JMB ‘Ehsars’,dismantling a training camp in rugged southeastern hills under a renewed campaign against militant outfits.