This is a follow-up to a couple of my previous posts (especially this one) in our Rohingya Reports category (72 posts!) and probably only will hold interest for readers who have been diehard followers of the Rohingya issue. To make a long story short, this ethnic group—Burmese Muslim Rohingya—is agitating with help from their friends in the NGO community to be resettled in the West. As far as we know, they are not officially in the US (yet!). I suspect, however, that some have come in with the Karen Christians*. They have begun to be officially resettled in the UK and Canada.
This is from the Daily Star in Dhaka (the Capital of Bangladesh). The Daily Star says it is “journalism without fear or favor.”
Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) had close links with Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), an insurgent group in the Arakan state of Myanmar, JMB’s explosives expert ‘Boma’ Mizan revealed in interrogations.
Sources close to Rab interrogators said Mizan and some other JMB operatives received training from RSO arms experts in a camp near Myanmar border in 2002.
Now executed JMB chief Shaekh Abdur Rahman sent them for the training. In exchange for the firearms lessons, JMB trained Rohingyas to improvise and set off bombs.
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (Huji) Bangladesh, another outlawed Islamist outfit, too had strong connections with RSO.
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Lately, some individuals claiming to be former Huji men told this correspondent that in the late 80s and 90s many of their fellow operatives took arms training from Rohingya rebels.
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Sources said Huji took RSO help also in securing weapons and funds. The Rohingyan group had extensive supplies of arms, and for funds it would count on a number of Muslim-majority countries especially those in the Middle East.
* We have resettled 8,149 Burmese refugees this fiscal year already (that is from Oct. 1, 2008-April 30, 2009). That number is second only to the number of Iraqis resettled in that time period (9,581). We have heard from sources that “Burmese Muslims” were getting into Karen Christian camps and getting into the US.