Identities of 3 ‘militants’ released
The police have released the identities of the three suspected militants killed on Saturday’s special operation in Paikpara, Narayanganj.
They are the alleged Gulshan attack mastermind Tamim Chowdhury, Fazle Rabbi of Kismet Noapara in the sadar upazilla of Jessore and Tausif Hossain of Ramchandrapur in Boalia, Rajshahi.
Law enforcers earlier released the identities of Tamim and Rabbi but were not sure about Tausif. After matching the third militant’s fingerprints with his national identity card on Saturday night, police confirmed his identity. Tausif’s father is a doctor and they live in the capital’s Dhanmondi.
Prothom Alo investigations revealed that Tausif left his home with Nibraas Islam (killed in the Gulshan attack) on 3 February and his family filed a general diary (GD) with Dhanmondi police station on 5 February saying their son had been missing.
Tausif was the seventh missing person on the list of suspected militants released by Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) on 9 August.
Although Narayanganj law enforcers disclosed the identity of Fazle Rabbi to Prothom Alo, the police administration of Jessore and Rabbi’s family have not yet confirmed his identity.
Prothom Alo’s Jessore correspondent reported that Fazle Rabbi, a first year student of physics in Michael Madhusudan (MM) College of Jessore, had been missing since April. “We are not quite sure but we heard that Rabbi has been killed in Narayanganj,” Rabbi’s family told Prothom Alo.
Rabbi dropped out from college before being reported missing on 7 April by his father Kazi Habibullah who filed a GD with the Jessore Kotwali police station and also put up a missing notice for his son on print media.
Other relatives of Rabbi said Rabbi set out for college with a backpack on 5 April and did not return. Kismet Noapara locals said that Rabbi did not mingle much with others.
However, they said he was closely affiliated with the imam of a local mosque. Based on this information, the police and RAB went to Rabbi’s house on the day of Eid to seek further information.
The police had recently put up posters of five missing suspected militants in Jessore. Rabbi was among the five missing.
The alleged Gulshan attack mastermind Tamim Chowdhury is the grandson of late Abdul Majid of Beanibazar, Sylhet and son of Shafi Ahmed.
Tamim migrated to Canada with his family when he was a student of grade three and was raised in Windsor, Canada.
On 2 August, chief of police’s counter terrorism unit Monirul Islam told a press conference that Tamim visited Bangladesh after a stopover in Dubai on October 2013.
“All recent attacks including the one in Gulshan were carried out by neo-JMB led by Tamim Chowdhury,” Inspector General of Police AKM Shahidul Hoque told reporters after the Narayanganj special drive.
The beginnings of Tamim’s militancy involvement are still unknown. “Tamim, a resident of Windsor in Ontario, Canada is a quiet man,” Amarnath Amarasingham a post-doctoral fellow and professor at the Dalhousie University told the National Post a Canadian newspaper on 8 June.
Professor Amarnath is a researcher on international Islamic State (IS) fighters. He said that a person named Wasim returned to Canada after being injured in Syria and he later went back to Syria with a fake passport. Wasim was a friend of Tamim.
“The IS will not be able to easily replace Tamim,” said Amarnath in an email message to Prothom Alo’s Canadian correspondent Ali Sagar on Saturday.
“This is a huge progress. Other than Tamim and few of his recruits, the IS has not yet been able to establish a concrete network in Bangladesh. His death is a big setback in establishing IS in Bangladesh,” Amarnath wrote in an e-mail to the Prothom Alo.
On Saturday morning, members of the counter terrorism and transnational crime unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) joined forces with SWAT and Narayanganj police in a special operation that killed three militant suspects including alleged Gulshan attack mastermind Tamim Chowdhury, at a three-storey building of Paikpara in Narayanganj.
Two police officers and twenty hostages, including 17 foreign nationals were killed by militants on 1 July attack at Holey Artisan restaurant in Gulshan of Dhaka.
Six people including five militants were killed in the shooting of joint forces during a commando operation inside the café early 2 July.
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