As the body of Indian teenager Tarishi Jain was consigned to the flames in Delhi by her distraught family on Monday, and Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Shaikh Hasina led her nation in paying homage to the 20 hostages who were butchered on Friday night in the Bangladeshi capital, the reason for the 12 hour delay before Bangladeshi forces launched a rescue operation is not the only development that has set off a furore in Dhaka.
Bangladeshi security experts said the seven terrorists, stayed on inside the Holey Artisan Bakery well after they had killed all the hostages shortly after they stormed the eatery Friday night, making no attempt to escape, despite the fact that there was little or no security around the restaurant.
“This was inexplicable. There was no security worth its name for at least another 12 hours until police and commandos launched their attack to rescue hostages, the next morning,” a Bangladeshi terror expert said, requesting anonymity.
“One reason could be that they had been brainwashed into believing that to enter ‘jannat’ (heaven) they must be martyred, and die at the hands of the soldiers.”
He said the terrorsists’ links to ISIS was proved by the fact that they spent the night uploading and sending pictures of their victims’ bloodied bodies to the ISIS website Amaq.
Dhaka’s Inspector-General of Police (IGP) AKM Shahidul Haque rejected allegations that police delayed the rescue operation. “Many media are reporting that we had delayed the rescue mission but we did not. We completed the mission within 12 hours while countries like Kenya took four days to fight similar incident at one of their shopping malls. The gunmen had killed the hostages within 20 minutes of the attack,” he said.
The Bangla terror expert also warned that like ISIS, who are made up of former members of former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein’s Baathists, Bangladesh was similarly awash with disgruntled former members of the border force, the Bangladesh Rifles, who had been discharged by Shaikh Hasina following the 2009 mutiny.
There was also concern over the radicalisation of educational institutions, he said.
On the charge by one of the Bangla PM’s top advisers that the terrorists hadbeen working at the behest of Pakistan’s ISI which is inimical to Shaikh Hasina’s government, he said “ If this is indeed true, then the link between ISIS and ISI should be investigated.”
Meanwhile, United States secretary of state John Kerry has offered Prime Minister Hasina help to investigate those behind the killing of 20 people at a Dhaka restaurant, as the police examine how the young, affluent and educated attackers were radicalised. Mr Kerry spoke to Ms Hasina on the telephone and offered FBI help in the investigation.
-"The secretary (Kerry) encouraged the government of Bangladesh to conduct its investigation in accordance with the highest international standards and offered immediate assistance from US law enforcement, including the FBI,-" US state department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the killing of the hostages, mostly foreigners, and two police officers during the 12-hour siege that ended on Saturday after the army stormed the Holey Artisan Bakery, killing six attackers and capturing one alive.
The body of Tarishi Jain, the 18 year-old Indian girl who was killed along with 19 others in the Dhaka terror attack, was cremated in Gurgaon in Haryana on Monday. Tarishi’s brother Sanchit performed the last rites at around 4:15 pm in a cremation ground at Sukhrali village near Iffco Chowk in the area bordering Delhi. Her family members were inconsolable with grief.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Shaikh Hasina and the ambassadors from Italy and Japan, placed wreaths during the ceremony at the Bangladesh Army Stadium in Dhaka cantonment where the Italian, Japanese and Indian flags flew at half mast.
