Bangladesh crafts law to curb terror financing

DHAKA, Monday (Reuters) - Bangladesh is set to pass a law clamping down on the financing of militants suspected of planning and carrying out attacks, a senior bank official said.

The Muslim nation has suffered a wave of bombings in recent months, including suicide attacks, and police blame Islamist militants for the violence.

"The new law will empower the central bank to suspend or stop operations of any account, for 30 days, in suspicious transactions without any notice," said Nazmul Hasan, an executive director of the central Bangladesh Bank.

The militants are fighting for Islamic sharia law in the mainly Muslim democracy. The government vows to crush the militants and uphold the country's secular constitution.

The government has not said how the Islamists are being funded. But media reports, quoting intelligence sources, said a number of Islamic non-governmental organisations, mostly based in the Middle East, provided money.

"Now the central bank will be able to detect and curb international terror financing, if any, in the country as well as local terror financing," Nazmul said.

The proposed law will be submitted to parliament through the law ministry, and has a strong chance of being passed because the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party holds a two-thirds majority in the legislature.

Under the law, owners of accounts used to finance militant attacks faced seven years in jail, Nazmul said.

At least 30 people have been killed and 150 wounded in suicide bomb attacks across the country since Aug. 17.

Authorities have blamed outlawed Islamist group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen of being involved. They have threatened hundreds more with death.

On Sunday, the elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested three suspected militants, including Shafiullah, who claimed to be the regional commander of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, in Rajshahi, nearly 300 km (185 miles) northwest of Dhaka, police said.

The RAB then recovered 5,000 detonators and huge bomb-making materials at Godagari, near Rajshahi town.

"We expect more breakthroughs soon as our drive against suspected suicide bombers and other militants gathers pace," a senior police officer said on Sunday.

Last week, the RAB arrested Ataur Rahman Sunny, operations commander of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, and brother of the group's supreme leader Shayek Abdur Rahman, who is still at large.