Md Joynal Abedin Khan :
Inspector General of Police AKM Shahidul Hoque on Monday rejected outright Professor Rohan Gunaratna’s claim about the presence of Islamic State in Bangladesh, saying it is untrue and baseless.
“Professor Rohan’s claim is baseless. The militants, who launched terror attack on Holey Artisan Bakery in Gulshan, were actually home-grown. They might have been imbued with the ideology of IS. But they didn’t have any link with the IS,” he said.
He came up with the remarks while attending a three-day Chiefs of Police Conference of South Asia and Neighbouring Countries on Regional Cooperation in Curbing Violent Extremism and Transnational Crime began on Sunday in the city under the auspices of Bangladesh Police and the Interpol.
The IGP said Rohan is neither a police officer, nor a military officer.
“He does not deal with any security issue. He is a professor of a university. So that he doesn’t have any experience over security issue in Bangladesh,” he said.
“Many people have been arrested in connection with the militant activities but not a single of them claimed to be the members of IS. Even the family members of the slain militants did not say they were IS members,” he said.
“None of them has taken training from IS,” he said, adding that they might have followed the ideology of IS.
The IGP further said the IS had claimed that they carried out deadly attack.
“Many [militants] of them were killed in operations following the incident but IS did not claim that those militants were members of IS,” he added.
The IGP termed Rohan’s claim as his own statement.
Besides, IGP also proposed the Interpol to open a regional office in Bangladesh to ease the communication and share information among the South Asian countries.
He claimed that the Interpol Secretary General Jurgen Stock assured him of taking necessary preparation to set up the local office.
Meanwhile, at least 82 per cent activists of the militant organizations were motivated through Facebook, Twitter and other online social media, said Md Moniruzzaman, Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG-Secret)
“Police will request Facebook authorities to require additional identification, including NID card numbers, from new Bangladeshi users of the social networking platform,” the AIG said.
A total of 58 foreign representatives, including Interpol Secretary General and police chiefs from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Malaysia are attending the three-day conference to conclude tomorrow.
Officials from Interpol, Facebook, US IGCI, FBI, ASEANpol and ICITAP and other international organizations are also participating in the conference. A total of 14 working sessions on various topics are being held at the three-day conference.
The topics include terrorism, human trafficking, financial crime, terrorism financing, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, intelligence and cybercrime issues.
