New York bomber not on Bangladesh terror list: Police
DHAKA: Bangladesh police scrambled yesterday for details about alleged New York subway bomber Akayed Ullah, but uncovered few early leads that might shed light on what might have driven him to try and kill commuters with a homemade bomb. US police say the 27-yearold immigrant from Bangladesh set off a crude bomb strapped to his body in a crowded New York subway passage on Monday but the device failed to detonate properly, leaving him the only one seriously harmed. Ullah told police investigators he wanted to avenge US airstrikes on the Islamic State group and was also inspired by Christmas terror plots in Europe, US media reported.
Bangladesh police are investigating whether Ullah was radicalized in his Muslim-majority homeland, where foreigners have been among those targeted in deadly assaults claimed by the IS group and Al-Qaeda. “So far, his name is not on our wide-range list of radicalized persons or members of terror groups, both from Bangladesh and outside,” senior counter terrorism police officer Sanwar Hossain said. “We are trying to gather more details,” he said. US authorities say Ullah migrated seven years ago as the member of a family already living there under what is known as “chain immigration”.
But a police spokeswoman in Bangladesh said preliminary investigations suggested the family left “17 or 18 years ago”. Bangladesh authorities are unclear exactly when Ullah left, but speculated he could have been shuttling back and forth between the two countries. “Maybe he was 10 or 11 years old (when the family left for the US),” police spokeswoman Sahely Ferdous said, adding Ullah’s “development of thinking” likely took place there. Bangladesh police said Ullah’s family hailed from Sandwip, an island off the coast of the southern port city of Chittagong but his father had left for the capital Dhaka some 30 years ago.
Visited Bangladesh in Sept
A friend of the family told AFP that Ullah married two years ago, but did not take his wife to the US. “His wife lives in Hazaribagh neighborhood in Dhaka, where the family lived for the last three decades, and where his father ran a grocery shop. They were married in 2015,” Sazzad Hossain Mukul, a friend of Ullah’s mother said. He said Ullah visited Bangladesh in September, and spent a month with his wife. Police confirmed the date of his last visit, but could not say whether Ullah was married.