Bangladesh arrests ‘mastermind’ of last year café massacre

Police in Bangladesh say they have detained another suspect in a terrorist attack on a Dhaka café last year, which claimed the lives of over 20 people.

According to Press TV, Monirul Islam, the head of the counter-terrorism police, confirmed on Saturday that Jahangir Alam had been arrested on Friday night during a raid in Elenga, a town in Tangail District, over 100 kilometers northwest of the capital Dhaka.

“He was one of the masterminds,” Islam further told reporters.

Bangladesh security forces have launched a major crackdown on suspected militants since a raid on the Holey Artisan Bakery café in Dhaka in early July, where more than 20 people, mainly foreign hostages, were killed.

The carnage occurred on July 1, when five assailants broke in the Holey Artisan Bakery café, situated in Dhaka’s Gulshan Thana, an affluent area with many embassies and frequented by foreign tourists, carrying crude bombs, machetes and pistols.  

They held hostage dozens of people, foreigners and locals alike, and during a gunfire that erupted between security forces and terrorists, all five terrorists were killed and two police officers lost their lives. The assailants, however, shot or hacked at least 22 people to death, mostly foreign nationals, before being gunned down some 10 hours later.

In the wake of the massacre, the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group claimed responsibility for the assault but authorities in Dhaka strongly dismissed the claim, arguing that Daesh had no presence in the Muslim-majority country. They, instead, blame the banned group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) for the deadly assault. However, according to security forces, the scale and sophistication of the attack suggested that transnational criminal networks had been involved.

SS