The terror suspect killed in an anti-terror raid in Dhaka’s Panthapath was a member of the Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing and his father is a leader of the Islamist party in his native Khulna, police officers say.
The man, who blew himself up at a hotel in the capital’s Panthapath, has been identified as Saiful Islam, a local of Khulna.
Police claimed he was an operative of the neo-JMB, a splinter group of banned Islamist group Jamaa’tul Mujahideen Bangladesh or JMB, blamed for last year’s attack on an upscale Gulshan restaurant.
Abul Khayer, father of dead militant Saiful Islam, is a Khulna Jamaat-e-Islami leader.
Khulna’s Dumuria police station Officer-in-Charge (OC) Habil Hossain said that Saiful, killed in Dhaka’s Panthapath raid on Tuesday, was a resident of Noakati village and the son of Noakati Matherhat Jame mosque Imam Abul.
Identifying Abul as a Jamaat treasurer, he said: “We discovered Saiful’s information in our documents. We called his father and asked him to come in for interrogation.” After the questioning, he was allowed to leave. Meanwhile police is investigating his home in Noakati.
Quoting Abul, the OC also said: “Saiful was enrolled as an honors student in the Political Science department of Government BL College. He used to visit his family at Khulna’s Naval Colony every week.
“He went to Dhaka for study related work on August 7. The last time his family heard from him was on Sunday. He had told them that he would return home on Monday but did not.”
Abul also informed the police that he and his son were not politically aligned and that Saiful disapproved of Jamaat’s politics.
Nazrul Islam, a Noakati local said: “Abul was sacked from his post as the Imam from Mollapara Jame Mosque because of his affiliation with Jamaat. He later became the Imam at Matherhat Jame Mosque.”
20-year-old Saiful reportedly blew himself up at Hotel Olio in Panthapath area during a police raid.
While briefing the journalists, IGP Shahidul Haque stated Saiful was planning to attack the processions coming out of Bangabandhu Memorial Museum on the National Mourning Day.
Source: The Daily Ittefaq
