Dhaka - Bangladesh's Awami League-led alliance government is to set up programmes to rehabilitate "innocent people" who get involved in militancy due to poverty, a junior minister said Tuesday.

"Many poor innocent people have been recruited by the militant outfits operating in the name of Islamist movements. They are simply lured and misguided by the terrorists," Tamjim Ahmed Sohel Taj, state minister for home affairs, told a group of journalists.

The government has decided to bring back "innocent" people from "the path of destruction," the minister added, claiming that the poor have sometimes been paid by terrorist organizations to launch attacks.

He said the militants have been recruiting people in three tiers: field-level recruits responsible for launching attacks; mid-level political activists; and students from private universities and other educational institutions to act as future moles within the police and military forces and the media.

The minister disclosed plans for a "rehabilitation" programme for those unwittingly serving the purposes of militant organizations, adding that imams at mosques and school teachers would be trained to make students and communities aware of militant organizations.

Predominately Muslim Bangladesh has been rocked by terrorist attacks several times in the past decade by Islamist militants, with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed narrowly escaping such an attack at an anti-terrorism rally in August 2004. (dpa)