Dhaka café attackers' identity baffle agencies

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan points at JMB hand, says terrorists 'home-grown'

Dhaka, July 3: One of the five gunmen who launched Friday's terror attack in Dhaka has been identified by an Awami League leader as Rohan Ibne Imtiaz, the son of another leader of the ruling party's city unit, even as the attack which claimed 20 lives -- mostly of foreigners -- was claimed by the Islamic State terror group.

Rohan has been recognised as the son of SM Imtiaz Khan Babul, a leader of the party's Dhaka City chapter and Bangladesh Olympic Association's deputy secretary general.

Babul lodged a police complaint on January 4 this year stating that his son was missing.

"We have identified him (Rohan) as Imtiaz Babul's son after going through the pictures that came up in the media and on Facebook," Mukul Chowdhury, a vice-president of the recently defunct Awami League's Dhaka City unit committee, said.

Babul was the youth and sports secretary of the same committee Chowdhury had served.

The Awami League currently rules the country and is one of the two largest political parties of Bangladesh.

Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said that neither Islamic State nor al Qaeda was involved. He reiterated the government's line that home-grown militants were responsible for a spate of killings in the country over the past 18 months.

"This was done by JMB," Khan said, referring to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, which claims to represent Islamic State in Bangladesh.

Deputy inspector general of police, Shahidur Rahman, said authorities were investigating any connection between the attackers and trans-tiol groups such as Islamic State or al Qaeda.

He said the militants were mostly educated and from rich families, but declined to give any more details. tiol police chief Shahidul Hoque said all the gunmen were Bangladeshi. "Five of them were listed as militants and law enforcers made several drives to arrest them," Hoque told reporters in Dhaka late on Saturday.

Former classmates have uploaded a photo combo in the social media of Rohan with his parents and a photo -- reportedly released by the Islamic State -- that monitoring group SITE Intelligence published on Twitter as one of the Dhaka cafe attackers.

All the attackers in the assault on a cafe in Dhaka in which terrorists slaughtered 20 civilians, mostly foreigners, including an Indian, were Bangladeshi citizens and five of them were wanted by police.

Police Inspector General Shahidul Hoque told CNN that police had tried to arrest these five militants previously.

Authorities also released the tiolities of the 20 hostages who were found dead inside the Holey Artisan Bakery cafe after Bangladeshi troops stormed the cafe early Saturday morning, ending an overnight siege.

According to the country's Joint Force Command, nine of the victims were Italian, seven were Japanese, one was from India, two were Bangladeshi and one was a US citizen of Bangladeshi origin. Eleven of the victims were male and nine were female.