Bangladesh ‘free of curse’ after police kill militant

Dhaka // Bangladesh’s prime minister said the nation was “free of another curse” on Saturday after police stormed a militant hideout, shooting dead the suspected mastermind of an horrific attack on a cafe that killed 22 hostages.

The bodies of three extremists were retrieved after police staged an hour-long gun battle with militants in Narayanganj, a city 25 kilometres south of Dhaka.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina praised police and intelligence agencies for the operation which killed Tamim Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi-Canadian believed to have planned the attack.

“The main mastermind of the Holey Artisan [attack] has been eliminated,” Ms Hasina said, referring to the massacre at the cafe in Dhaka’s upmarket Gulshan district.

“The nation has become free of another curse,” she said, adding that the “elimination of the extremists” would bolster “people’s confidence”.

The police raid came two days before US Secretary of State John Kerry is set to arrive in Bangladesh, the highest-ranked Western official to visit the South Asian nation since the attack.

Officials said security issues, including Dhaka-Washington DC antiterror cooperation, will feature during Mr Kerry’s talks with his Bangladeshi counterpart on Monday.

Thirty-year-old Chowdhury, who returned from Canada in 2013, had earlier been named by police as the suspected mastermind of the attack on the cafe.

“The operation went on for an hour. We can see three dead bodies. They did not surrender. They threw four to five grenades at police and fired from AK22 rifles,” Bangladesh national police chief AKM Shahidul Hoque said.

“Three extremists were killed. Among them, one of the dead persons looked exactly like the photo of Tamim Chowdhury that we have,” he said.

ISIL claimed responsibility for the July 1 attack, releasing photos from inside the cafe during the siege and of the five men who carried out the deadly assault and were shot dead at its finale.

But police and the Bangladesh government rejected ISIL’s claim, saying a new faction of home-grown militant group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) led by Chowdhury was behind the attack in which 20 hostages, including 18 foreigners, were killed along with two policemen.

Police blame the JMB for the deaths of more than 80 foreigners and members of religious minorities over the last three years.

“Tamim Chowdhury’s chapter is closed here,” Bangladesh home minister Asaduzzaman Khan said after visiting the site of the raid.

He said other extremists were “very few” in number and face imminent arrest.

A series of raids on suspected militant hideouts carried out with the Rapid Action Battalion elite security force have killed at least 24 extremists since the cafe attack.

Police on August 2 announced a two million taka (Dh92,000) reward for information leading to the arrest of Chowdhury, who disappeared after the attack.

Police say Chowdhury has led and financed efforts to radicalise young Muslims since returning from Canada three years ago.

His role in fostering extremism was revealed during the interrogation of Rakibul Hasan, 25, who was arrested in a raid on a militant hideout in July in which nine extremists were killed in Dhaka.

A police report into that raid said Chowdhury and others gave Hasan and other militants “money, explosives and weapons” and “trained and advised” them.

Bangladesh has been reeling from a deadly wave of attacks in the last three years, including on foreigners, rights activists and members of the country’s religious minorities.

*Agence France-Presse