Bangladesh on Tuesday pressed anti-terrorism charges against several suspects and identified the fifth assailant in the country’s worst terror attack as authorities intensified efforts to unravel the plot behind the brazen assault in which 22 people were slaughtered by terrorists.
“Six bodies were initially thought to be of terrorists but later five of them have been identified by their parents... Evidence suggest they are militants,” home minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters here.
“All the slain militants are Bangladeshis and belong to different homegrown extremist groups,” he added.
Gunmen stormed a popular restaurant in Dhaka’s diplomatic enclave late on Friday and killed 22 people, mostly foreigners from Italy, Japan, India and the US, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State.
Mr Khan declined to reply questions from reporters about the identity of the sixth slain suspect. The relatives and staff of the Holey Artisan Bakery, however, claimed that one of the six dead “terrorists” was the chef of the cafe, Saiful Islam Chowkider.
He also evaded questions on the identity of the lone surviving attacker who has been captured alive during the army-led commando operations last week or how many suspects were being detained in connection with the massacre.
Meanwhile, the police on Tuesday said they are investigating whether security forces accidentally shot dead the innocent kitchen worker when they stormed the cafe.
“We think that he was accidentally shot dead,” said police official of the 39-year-old cafe worker. “We are investigating.”
Investigators earlier on Tuesday said they have identified the fifth of six assailants who carried out the carnage as their unfolding backgrounds stunned Bangladesh.
“We now know the background of another slain assailant, who until months ago was studying at a government college in (northwestern) Bogra,” one of the officers familiar with the investigation told PTI. But the media reports and analysts found a common peculiar history among all the five attackers, in their 20s, as they went missing between three and six months ago and reappeared at the scene the terror attack on Friday night.
Three of them hailed from wealthy families and studied in posh schools and universities at home and abroad while the rest two came from a rural background and poorer families.
Investigators earlier said one of the youths appeared to have led the massacre with a background of madrasa education in a village in northwestern Bangladesh.
The charges against the suspects in the case were filed at Gulshan police station at midnight, inspector-general of police (IGP) A.K.M. Shahidul Haque said.
“We filed the case under the Anti-terrorism Act... Five men have been made accused by their names and several others as unidentified accused,” the duty officer of the police station said.
The police on Monday said two persons were in their custody who will be quizzed later as they are unwell. Foreign minister A.H. Mahmood Ali briefed foreign diplomats stationed here highlighting the current situation and steps taken by the government so far after the attack. The police on Saturday night released the photos of the five militants and identified them as “Akash”, “Bikash”, “Don”, “Bandhon” and “Ripon”. But, the Islamic State named the five gunmen in photos released hours after the attack as Abu Umayer, Abu Salma, Abu Rahiq, Abu Muslim and Abu Muharib.
Regarding differences between names, the police chief cited the trend among militants to use aliases. Three other gunmen were all from well-to-do families and studied at Dhaka’s top English medium schools.
Some of the hostages are being quizzed by the police to get useful information in tracing the origins of the attack.
The Italian foreign ministry in travel advisories said it could not exclude the possibility of further attacks in Bangladesh.
It asked people to exercise the “utmost prudence” while travelling in Bangladesh and limit their activities to only what was necessary.
The Awami League government has blamed homegrown militants of the Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) for the attack which it says is part of a plot to destabilise the country and has accused the main Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its Islamist ally Jamaat-e-Islami of fomenting trouble.
