Hunt on for untraced foreign clerics
Home ministry bars 4 clerics from entering country
Habibullah Mizan
The home ministry had asked the immigration police not to allow four controversial Islamic clerics to enter the country. After the Gulshan attack, in which 17 foreigners were killed, law enforcement personnel started collecting information as to whether these blacklisted foreign clerics had succeeded in visiting Bangladesh after somehow dodging the immigration department. They have also gathered information about those Islamic organisations that had been trying to invite these blacklisted clerics.
Sources said after the Gulshan attack, the Special Branch of the police were conducting countrywide raids to arrest the untraced foreign clerics as well as Pakistani nationals.
According to a secret document issued by the home ministry, the political wing of the ministry instructed the police to bar Tanzanian citizen Abdur Rahim Green, who currently lives in the US, Saudi Arab national Sheikh Asim al Hakim, Dr Sheikh Towfiq Chowdhury, another Saudi national living in Australia, and Saudi citizen Sheikh Musle Khan, who currently lives in Canada, from entering Bangladesh.
They were blacklisted in Bangladesh on December 11, 2014.
The home ministrys note says these controversial clerics would try and visit Bangladesh between December 2014 and 2015. They were allegedly involved in misinterpreting Islam across the world and some local organisations would try to invite them to the country, it adds.
The note was signed by the deputy secretary of the home ministry, Md Habibur Rahman, a copy of which was sent to the principal secretary to the Prime Ministers Office (PMO).
Nadia Akter received the home ministrys note on behalf of the Immigration and Passports Directorate. It was later forwarded to officials of the immigration department.
Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal informed Parliament this June that there are currently 112,485 foreigners in the country. The visas of 910 of them had expired.
