Bangladesh has ordered policemen to shoot in self-defence if fired upon, the home minister said on Friday, after a policeman was killed in an attack claimed by ISIS militants.
Bangladesh has ordered policemen to shoot in self-defence if fired upon, the home minister said on Friday, after a policeman was killed in an attack claimed by ISIS militants.
Usually, policemen at checkpoints and guarding government installations have to get take permission from their superiors or a magistrate before they can open fire.
But a wave of attacks on bloggers and publishers for publishing articles critical of religious extremism as well as the killing of two foreigners have raised fears that militants are targeting its secular democracy.
“We have asked the police to counter any attacks on them. They can open fire immediately for their safety,” home minister Asaduzzaman Khan said.
On Wednesday, two men on a motorcycle stabbed a policeman at a checkpoint in Ashulia, about 20 km north of the capital, Dhaka, in an attack that was later claimed by ISIS. The men fled without the police firing a shot.
The US-based SITE intelligence group said the ISIS had claimed responsibility for that killing.Mr Khan, however, rejected that claim pointing the finger instead at domestic political rivals linked to Islamist parties.
“This is nothing but a plan to destabilise the country and create panic among the police,” he said.Bangladesh’s government has put several leaders of the Opposition Jamaat-e-Islami on trial for war crimes committed during the 1971 war and believes some of its members are instigating militant groups to carry out attacks.
