Briton among 2 arrested over deadly Bangladesh cafe attack

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Police take cover as a man lies on the ground near the Holey Artisan Bakery restaurant in Dhaka during an attack by suspected Islamist militants. Photo by AFP

Police take cover as a man lies on the ground near the Holey Artisan Bakery restaurant in Dhaka during an attack by suspected Islamist militants. Photo by AFP

DHAKA: A British national and a student of a Canadian University have been arrested for their alleged involvement in Bangladesh’s worst terror attack at a cafe here last month that killed 22 people, including an Indian girl, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reports.

Hasanat Karim, a Bangladeshi-British citizen, and Tahmid Hasib Khan were arrested last night and booked under the Code of Criminal Procedure’s Section 54, which allows arrest without warrants on grounds of suspicion, police said on Thursday.

A Dhaka court on Thursday ordered their interrogation in police custody for eight days.

Witnesses said police and plain clothes security personnel whisked them away from the heavily guarded courtroom.

The two were dining at the Holey Artisan Bakery at the time of attack and rescued by security personnel. Militants killed 22 people during the attack on July 1.

Tahmid, 22, and Hasanat, 47, were arrested last night from two separate areas Gulshan and Bashundha Residential area, Dhaka police’s spokesman Masudur Rahman told reporters.

The development came a day after Inspector General of Police AKM Shahidul Hoque told a news conference that the two were under police vigil for suspected terrorist links.

But the lawyers of the suspects told the court that their clients were in custody since the attack.

Their families had been maintaining that the two did not return since July 2, after being rescued from the cafe.

Hasanat’s family said he along with his wife and kids had gone to the restaurant to celebrate his daughter’s birthday.

He was a former teacher at the North South University, which had sacked him in 2012 for spreading “radical” ideology among the students. Two of the five perpetrators of the attack were also former students of the university.

Tahmid, whose father is a businessman, studies at a university in Canada. His family said that he had come to Dhaka a day before the attack and had gone to the cafe to hang out with his friends.

The police chief has announced bounties for the presumed mastermind of the attack and leader of outlawed neo-Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) Bangladeshi-Canadian Tamim Chowdhury and a renegade and sacked army major Zia-ul Haque identifying him as the leader of Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT).

Security experts said the neo-JMB was ideologically inclined to ISIS while ABT was close to al-Qaeda.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack and released photos of the five attackers who were killed during the assault on the restaurant.

Law enforcers, however, said home-grown militant outfit Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) was responsible for it.

After the end of siege, 32 people, including 13 rescued hostages were taken to the Detective Branch office for de-briefing. All of them were released, except for Hasanat and Tahmid. – Bernama