The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) has arrested the last fugitive suspect in the deadly terror attack on the Holey Artisan cafe at Gulshan in Dhaka.
RAB sources said they arrested the fugitive—Shariful Islam alias Khalid, 27— on Nachol-Mohipur road around 3:00pm on Friday, reports bdnews24.com.
Sayeed Abdullah Al Murad, Chanpainawabganj RAB camp in-charge, said they arrested Shariful alone known aka Nahid aka Abu Sulaiman, following information given by the force’s Dhaka office.
Shariful is a top leader of the banned militant outfit Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh’s revived faction Neo-JMB, which is blamed for the deadly 2016 attack on the cafe attack, the RAB official said.
They were preparing to send Shariful alias Khalid to Dhaka, he added.
RAB-5 deputy commander Major Shibli Mostafa said Shariful is among the two militants sentenced to death for the killing of Prof AFM Rezaul Karim Siddiquee of Rajshahi University’s Department of English.
Shariful was a student at the department, the law enforcers said.
Prof Siddiquee, 58, was hacked to death in the city’s Shalbagan while he was waiting to ride a university bus on Apr 23, 2016.
According to a tweet of SITE Intelligence Group, Islamic State claimed in its Amaq News Agency it killed Siddiquee for ‘calling to atheism’.
Bangladesh authorities and security agencies, however, deny the presence of the Middle East-based radical group in the country despite its claim of credit for the Gulshan attack as well.
The arrest of Shariful came 15 days after the arrest of another absconding suspect in the Gulshan attack, Mamunur Rashid Ripon, in Gazipur.
Police’s Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crimes Unit had previously said that they believed Khalid and Ripon had fled across the border to India.
According to a report from Indian publication Anandabazar in early 2017, Indian detective agencies believed that Khalid and Ripon were attempting to raise militant groups in West Bengal under the aliases ‘Abu Sulaiman’ and ‘Banglar Bagh 2’.
The trial over the Gulshan cafe attack proceeded in their absence. The court had issued arrest warrants against them and ordered their property seized.
On the night of Jul 1, 2016 a group of five young men shot and slaughtered 20 people, including 20 foreign nationals in the upscale cafe.
Five attackers were killed by army commandos the following day. They were identified as Nibras Islam, Rohan Ibne Imtiaz, Meer Saameh Mubasheer, Khairul Islam Payel and Shafiqul Islam.
On Jul 23, 2018, two years after the incident, Counter Terrorism Unit Inspector Humayun Kabir identified 21 people in connection with the attack and formally charged in court eight living suspects.
According to the investigation report, the attack was carried out by Neo-JMB militants after six months of planning. The goal was to create ‘unrest’ in the country and transform it into a ‘militant state’.
The Dhaka Anti-Terrorism Tribunal accepted the charges on Nov 26 of last year, starting the trial.
Six of the accused, Jahangir Alam alias Rajib Gandhi, Rakibul Hasan Regan, Rashedul Islam alias Rash, Sohel Mahfuz, Mizanur Rahman alias Baro Mizan and Hadisur Rahman Sagar, were brought to the court for indictment.
