Bangladeshi police arrest militant as main suspect in bank robbery

DHAKA (Reuters) - Police said on Sunday they have arrested the main suspect involved in a bank robbery in Bangladesh last month when nine people were killed. Police earlier said at least 10 members of the al Qaeda-inspired Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) robbed the branch of state-run Bangladesh Commerce Bank on April 21, in Ashulia, 20 km north of the capital Dhaka. The suspect was a top leader of the ABT, a senior police official Mostafa Kamal told Reuters, adding that he was arrested Saturday night. They killed the manager of the bank to get the key to the vault and managed to pocket 700,000 taka ($8,860) before the alarm was raised via loudspeaker from a nearby mosque. The gang detonated a bomb as they fled, chased by customers and onlookers who beat one ABT member to death. A total of nine men were killed in the incident. Last week the Interior Ministry banned the group, also suspected of involvement in the killing of three secular bloggers who were hacked to death in the majority-Muslim South Asian nation of 160 million people this year. Separately, police arrested a suspected member of Islamic State in Dhaka, following the detention days earlier of two other suspects, including an IT manager at a subsidiary of Coca-Cola Co KO.N. (Reporting by Ruma Paul; Editing by Greg Mahlich)