Despite getting a Facebook message from their son saying he had gone off to Iraq to join the Islamic State (IS) group, a Chittagong Navy family withheld the information for a year and a half, police sources said.
Marine engineer Najibullah Ansari, missing since January 2015, contacted his family on social media to tell them he was in Iraq to take part in “jihad.”
But it was not until a year and a half later, when television channels started carrying images of missing people in the wake of the Gulshan and Sholakia terror attacks, that Najibullah’s father Md Rafiqullah Ansari, filed a general diary (GD) with police.
Rafiqullah, a Navy man at Chittagong Naval base on leave prior to retirement, filed the GD with Chittagong City EPZ police station on July 10.
“Najibullah has been without trace since he went abroad in January 2015. His father filed a general diary to locate him after seeing his photo on TV,” Officer-in-Charge (OC) of EPZ police station Abul Kalam Azad told the Dhaka Tribune.
The GD says Najibullah contacted his family for the last time via his Facebook account and told his younger brother that he was in Iraq to take part in jihad.
“I have come to Iraq. Tell father and mother not to worry for me. I have come here for jihad. I will never return home. I will call if I can manage time,” according to a screen shot of the message seen by the Dhaka Tribune.
The Dhaka Tribune located Najibullah’s Facebook account and found that he had posted on January 1, 2015 a photo of himself wearing a marine engineer’s uniform inside a ship. That appears to have been his last post.
“Najibullah went to Iraq from his work abroad. His family hid it from everyone because IS was not a major topic at the time,” the OC said.
Najibullah passed his SSC and HSC examinations from Rajshahi Cadet College in 2005 and 2007, respectively, securing GPA 5 in both examinations, the OC said quoting the GD.
He then went to Malaysian Maritime Academy on an American Eagle Tanker Company Internship and completed his higher education there at the beginning of 2012.
The OC said Najibullah then began work as a marine engineer aboard ship.
Najibullah has not returned to Bangladesh since 2012, OC Abul Kalam added.
The OC said the missing man’s father told police in January 2015 that Najibullah had sent a message on Facebook saying he had gone to Iraq to join IS.
“But he filed the GD only after seeing his son’s photo along with nine others on TV,” the OC said.
In the GD, Rafiqullah said an intelligence agency had contacted him at the time he first told police about the Facebook message and asked him for his son’s passport number, which he provided to them.
Days later, Rafiqullah said he was told by an officer of the intelligence agency that his son Najibullah could not be brought home because his whereabouts were unknown.
A top police official of Chittagong Metropolitan Police (CMP) told the Dhaka Tribune that the Najibullah case was discussed at the monthly crime conference held Tuesday at CMP HQ.
“The man went to Iraq to join IS. According to procedure, the CMP Special Branch (SB) has been informed and the issue was discussed in the monthly crime conference,” CMP Assistant Commissioner (AC) of Bandar Circle Jahedul Islam told the Dhaka Tribune.
“We also informed the SB office in Dhaka. The police are trying to determine whether Najibullah is in Iraq or not,” AC Jahedul said.
Chittagong district police said some five teenagers and young men including three madrasa students have been missing from three upazilas in the district.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
