3 Bangladesh SC lawyers accused of funding terror

Bangladeshi security forces said  that they had arrested three lawyers practising at the Supreme Court in connection with funding for an Islamist group to buy weapons. They had given 10 million taka ($13,000) to the newly formed Shaheed Hamza Brigade, Miftah Uddin Ahmed, head of the Rapid Action Battalion in the Chittagong region, told Reuters, adding that they were arrested overnight in the capital Dhaka. In April, several brigade members were arrested in the port city of Chittagong. The Shaheed Hamza Brigade was founded by students of a madrassa in Chittagong with the aim of armed revolution against the oppression of Muslims around the world, the Rapid Action Battalion has said. Militants have targeted secularist writers in Bangladesh in recent years, while the government has tried to crack down on hardline Islamist groups seeking to make the South Asian nation of 160 million people a shariabased state. Three suspected Islamist militants, including a British citizen of Bangladeshi origin, were arrested on Tuesday for masterminding the killings of two secular bloggers. The court allowed police to hold them for seven days for interrogation. The three are suspected members of the Ansarullah Bangla Team, a banned Islamic militant group. Bangladesh banned the organization in May after police accused its members of threatening and killing bloggers.