SINGAPORE/DHAKA: Eight Bangladeshi men held in Singapore for allegedly plotting attacks in their homeland had formed a terrorist cell that met in parks and open fields and shared radical propaganda and videos, authorities in the city-state said on Wednesday. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said it had issued two-year detention orders for the men, who it says called themselves the Islamic State in Bangladesh (ISB), under Singapore’s colonial-era Internal Security Act, which allows suspects to be held for lengthy periods without trial. “The ISB is the first group comprising all foreigners to be detained under the ISA for terrorism-related activities in Singapore,” the ministry said in a statement. Wealthy, multi-ethnic Singapore, which has not faced any successful militant attacks in decades, had announced the arrests on Tuesday, saying its investigations showed the ISB had identified several possible targets in Bangladesh. Giving further details on Wednesday, authorities said the group had a hierarchical structure with a leader, deputy leader and members assigned specific roles such as finance. Its members had each worked in Singapore for between three and 10 years and generally lived in different accommodation, the MHA said, adding they were not known to have been radicalised when they arrived in the city-state. There were no indications that they had planned to carry out attacks in Singapore, it said. Five other Bangladeshis who came to the authorities attention during the same investigation had been sent back to the South Asian nation, the MHA said. Police in Dhaka said they had been arrested since their return. They were not involved with the ISB group, the MHA said, but had been found to be in possession of jihadi-related material or to support the use of armed violence for a religious cause. Dhaka city police spokesman Maruf Hossain Sardar said the five, who travelled to Singapore between 2007 and 2011, were being investigated for possible connections with local militant group Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT). They were returned to Bangladesh on April 29 and were arrested in different parts of Dhaka on Tuesday, Sardar said. “We monitored their activities and then arrested them. A court granted seven-day police remand to them,” he added. Militants in Bangladesh have targeted atheist bloggers, academics, religious minorities and foreign aid workers in a series of killings that dates back to February 2015 and has claimed at least 20 lives. Bangladesh authorities have said the ABT was behind the attacks on online critics of religious extremism and the killing last month of a gay rights campaigner and his friend.