Staff Reporter :
A Bangladeshi-origin young man with beard, whose eyes are covered with a pair of spectacles and head with a piece of cloth, also equipped with a heavy automatic firearm, is seen in a picture sitting in a car.
It is yet not known his name and other whereabouts. But the US-based SITE Intelligence Group has claimed that he was a Bangladesh-born militant and a ‘suicide bomber’ of Middle East-based international Islamist militant organization Islamic State.
In a ‘lone-wolf attack’ he reportedly blew himself up in Tikrit, Iraq recently. The SITE Intelligence, however, did not disclose where and when the picture was taken.
But in a new IS video, released on Tuesday, the Bangladeshi man was seen urging his compatriots to carry out ‘lone-wolf’ attacks in Bangladesh. The video was actually captured by IS-affiliated al-Furat media.
Quoting al-Furat, the SITE Intelligence in a report also said that the Bangladeshi suicide bomber had called on his “Muslim countrymen to immigrate for jihad or carry out lone-wolf attacks in Bangladesh” before accomplishing his suicidal mission.
Meanwhile, the Independent World Report editor Tasneem Khalil in a Facebook post on Wednesday claimed that the reported suicide bomber Abu Maryam had died in Tikrit, Iraq.
Earlier, the international media had reported that one Bangladeshi origin IS militant Saiful Haque Sujan was killed in an air attack by US troops in Syria last year. A US Commander described the Bangladesh IS militant as one of the most important IS officials.
Not only that, there are widespread speculations that the IS operatives were directly involved in the Gulshan’s Holey Artisan Bakery attack in July 2016.
Bangladesh government, in the meantime, categorically denied the presence of IS operatives in the country. Senior Bangladeshi officials described the Neo- JMB, as a faction of the Shayakh Abdur Rahman-led old JMB, which was founded in 2015.
On Tuesday, Singaporean Professor Dr Rohan Gunaratna of the Nayang University of Technology, while addressing the police chief’s conference in Dhaka, claimed that the IS operatives were behind the Gulshan café attack.
Interestingly, the Inspector General of Police AKM Shahidul Haque refuted the claim instantly saying that the café attackers were local terrorists [homegrown militants]. “They might have connections with ME groups. But there is not IS presence in Bangladesh,” IGP said.
Echoing the same, several Ministers, including State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam recently said that IS terrorist outfits did not exist in Bangladesh. Besides, there was no evidence to support the claim that homegrown militants had links to foreign groups [IS], they said.
A Bangladeshi-origin young man with beard, whose eyes are covered with a pair of spectacles and head with a piece of cloth, also equipped with a heavy automatic firearm, is seen in a picture sitting in a car.
It is yet not known his name and other whereabouts. But the US-based SITE Intelligence Group has claimed that he was a Bangladesh-born militant and a ‘suicide bomber’ of Middle East-based international Islamist militant organization Islamic State.
In a ‘lone-wolf attack’ he reportedly blew himself up in Tikrit, Iraq recently. The SITE Intelligence, however, did not disclose where and when the picture was taken.
But in a new IS video, released on Tuesday, the Bangladeshi man was seen urging his compatriots to carry out ‘lone-wolf’ attacks in Bangladesh. The video was actually captured by IS-affiliated al-Furat media.
Quoting al-Furat, the SITE Intelligence in a report also said that the Bangladeshi suicide bomber had called on his “Muslim countrymen to immigrate for jihad or carry out lone-wolf attacks in Bangladesh” before accomplishing his suicidal mission.
Meanwhile, the Independent World Report editor Tasneem Khalil in a Facebook post on Wednesday claimed that the reported suicide bomber Abu Maryam had died in Tikrit, Iraq.
Earlier, the international media had reported that one Bangladeshi origin IS militant Saiful Haque Sujan was killed in an air attack by US troops in Syria last year. A US Commander described the Bangladesh IS militant as one of the most important IS officials.
Not only that, there are widespread speculations that the IS operatives were directly involved in the Gulshan’s Holey Artisan Bakery attack in July 2016.
Bangladesh government, in the meantime, categorically denied the presence of IS operatives in the country. Senior Bangladeshi officials described the Neo- JMB, as a faction of the Shayakh Abdur Rahman-led old JMB, which was founded in 2015.
On Tuesday, Singaporean Professor Dr Rohan Gunaratna of the Nayang University of Technology, while addressing the police chief’s conference in Dhaka, claimed that the IS operatives were behind the Gulshan café attack.
Interestingly, the Inspector General of Police AKM Shahidul Haque refuted the claim instantly saying that the café attackers were local terrorists [homegrown militants]. “They might have connections with ME groups. But there is not IS presence in Bangladesh,” IGP said.
Echoing the same, several Ministers, including State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam recently said that IS terrorist outfits did not exist in Bangladesh. Besides, there was no evidence to support the claim that homegrown militants had links to foreign groups [IS], they said.
