Investigators on Thursday identified the mastermind and the trainer of the international militant outfit Islamic State (IS) in Bangladesh as Tamim Chowdhury and Tareq, respectively.
Police recovered some important evidences from the Kalyanpur militant den they raided on Tuesday night and found links of financiers and masterminds of the trained militant network. According to evidences, Tamim was a Bangladeshi born Canadian citizen. He returned from Canada one year ago and involved with militant activities secretly.
Police on Thursday identified the eighth militant killed in the Kalyanpur raid and said he was the trainer of attackers in Gulshan's Holey Artisan bakery and café on July 1. Along with this startling revelation, police also said the dead militants in Kalyanpur wore black dresses apparently sensing their imminent death and they also shouted allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the chief of the Islamic State (IS) international militant group.
At the Holey Artisan, the terrorists killed 20 hostages including 17 foreigners and two police officers in what was the worst such incident in Bangladesh's history. The IS claimed responsibility for the attack but the Bangladesh government and law enforcers said they were all members of Jamaat-ul- Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a local militant outfit.
Police said they took pictures of the dead militants on the fourth floor of Kalyanpur's Taj Manjil using sophisticated photo technology and also recovered some electronic devices from the spot. The pictures looked like those of the Gulshan attack, police claimed on Thursday. Militants at both Gulshan and Kalyanpur belonged to the outlawed JMB, said Monirul Islam, chief of Dhaka police's Anti-Terrorism and Transnational Crimes Unit.
Police said the dead militant identified on Thursday was a youth missing from Rangpur who "trained the Gulshan cafe attackers" and was the acting chief of the group in the capital.
He is said to be one Raihan Kabir, son of Shahjahan Kabir from Rangpur's Pirgachha area. Following this, only one other militant from the Kalyanpur den remains to be identified.
"He (Raihan Kabir) was a trainer of Gulshan attackers," Monirul Islam told journalists at a press briefing on Thursday morning.
Police formerly knew him as Tareq and was looking for him under this name in the murder case of a policeman in Ashulia last December. Cops suspect, he was the acting chief of militants in Dhaka. On Wednesday night, a case was filed against 10 people in this regard naming eight militants - including the one held captive - and some other anonymous persons. The case was filed under Anti-Terrorism Act. Police recovered at least 50 evidences from the spot.
Police said militants had set up their den on the level four of a building named `Taj Manzil' on Road No.5 in Kalyanpur. Mahbub Hossain, OC of Mirpur Police Station, told The Daily Observer that the case, under the Anti-terrorism Act, named the nine killed, the one captured alive and several others unidentified men. He said that the case was lodged on Wednesday night with Mirpur Model Police Station.
Tuesday's raid in Kalyanpur began after midnight and ended with a special operation of the joint forces - codenamed "Storm 26" - Wednesday morning.
One militant was held captive, who identified himself as a follower of the Islamic State. Another suspected militant managed to escape. Until Wednesday, seven of the militants could be identified. Among them was a youth who was a student of privately-run North South University. Some were also with madrasa background.
Identities of seven of them were confirmed by matching their fingerprints with the National ID database, police said on Wednesday. They were named as Md Abdullah from Dinajpur, 23, Abu Hakim Nayeem, 24, from Patuakhali, Motiur Rahman from Satkhira, Zobayer Hossain, 22, from Noakhali, and Taj-ul-Haque Rashik, 24, from Dhanmondi, Akifuzzaman Khan, 24, from Gulshan, and Shehzad Rauf Arka from Basundhara, in Dhaka.
Of them, Shehzad is a US citizen. The youth, 'missing' since February, was a friend of one of the dead Gulshan cafe attackers, Nibras Islam. Of them 3 were former NSU students and three madrasa students.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday, DMP's counter-terrorism chief Monirul Islam criticised the "conspiracy theorists" who questioned the success of the drive. Monirul pointed out that almost five hours had passed between the police made first contact with the suspects and the final push to enter the den.
"Do you need to be an intellectual to understand whether they [suspects] were sleeping for such a long time or whether they had time to put on these (black) dresses," Monirul questioned.
