Bangladesh arrests four over café attack
Security officers in Bangladesh have nabbed four suspects, including a computer engineer, for their role in running the social media operations of a terrorist group that had staged a deadly raid on a Dhaka café.
Bangladeshi authorities announced on Wednesday that they had taken into custody IT expert Ashfak-e-Azam and three other suspected collaborators following a security raid in the capital, Dhaka.
During the security operation, they also seized fire guns, explosives, and ammunition.
Police described the detainees as “trained militants.”
“Azam is the information technology chief of the Sarwar-Tamim group,” said Mufti Mahmud Khan, a spokesman for the elite Rapid Action Battalion, which conducted the raid.
A senior official at the anti-terrorism battalion also said that the 25-year-old Azam had been involved with the militant group since 2011 and was running its website and social media accounts.
Sarwar-Tamim is reportedly a new faction of a local militant group known as Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), which has been blamed for a series of bloody terror assaults.
The siege at the upscale Dhaka café last July killed 22 people — mostly foreigners.
Although many of the terror attacks conducted by local extremist groups in Bangladesh in the past year have been claimed by the Daesh and al-Qaeda terrorist groups, the government of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina says local radical outfits, particularly the JMB, have also been responsible.
Authorities reject the notion that global terror groups maintain a foothold in the majority-Muslim country of over 160 million.
Since the bloody café attack in Dhaka, local security forces have staged a massive crackdown on alleged radical groups, killing nearly 50 suspected militants, including what they have identified as the founders of the new JMB faction.
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