MLM:"An In-depth Look at Bangladeshi Militant and Propagandist Mushtaq Arman Khan" 

In early May 2020, the Bangladeshi police counter-terrorism unit arrested 17 members of the banned terrorist group, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), in Dhaka. At the time of the arrest, the JMB operatives planned to join Imam Mahdi, the spiritual redeemer of Islam, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The detained militants had been taking shelter in Dhaka’s Kakrail Mosque in disguise as Tablighi Jamaat members and acknowledged that seven others among them had already left the country for Saudi Arabia at different times to become soldiers of Imam Mahdi (Business Standard, May 5, 2020). 

The self-proclaimed “Imam Mahdi” was identified as Mushtaq Arman Khan, a Bangladeshi expatriate in Saudi Arabia who spread Islamist propaganda through social media channels (YouTube, February 10, 2020). He lamented through his online speeches and writing about the arrests of his followers by the Bangladeshi authorities. Earlier, in January 2020, four students of Bangladesh Agricultural University in Mymensingh travelled to Saudi Arabia on the pretext of performing Umrah (Islamic pilgrimage), and reportedly pledged allegiance and joined Khan as his followers (Daily Star, May 06, 2020)

Full Text (Subscription): Militant Leadership Monitor, (Volume XIII, Issue 1), January 2022.