Close watch on Qatar-based NGO linked to Ahab
Rafique Sarker, Rangpur
Following information that the Qatar Charitable Society, with its station at Alambiditor under Gangachhara upazila in the district, is organising orphan youths and children in the region to prepare them for Jihad (Islamic war), intelligence agencies have kept the organisation under close observation. The activities of the organisation, formerly a unit of Al Haramaine, a banned Islamic social welfare institution, also raised questions among the locals and the law enforcement agencies. After the United Nations had taken actions against Saudi based Al Haramaine for its alleged terror links, the Bangladesh Government banned its activities in September 2002. Law enforcement agencies have got information that Al Haramaine shifted most of the children under their supervision to several Ahle Hadith madrasas in Rangpur, Nilphamari and Lalmonirhat districts. Even the children that stayed back home were under close observation of Al Haramaine men. Eight months after closure, the organisation launched its activities at the same houses with the same manpower under Qatar Charitable Society and called back the children from the Ahle Hadith madrasas and from homes to join their courses. Mohammed Ali, a Sudan citizen, who worked as the chief of Al Haramaine at Alambiditor from 1997 to September 2002, became the chief of the new organisation. "Qatar Charitable Society is doing the same things that Al Haramaine did in the area," Mohammed Ali told this correspondent. The Sudan citizen married a local girl of Alambiditor and merged in the society, locals said.
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