Bangladeshis ID airliner’s hijacker

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Officials on Monday identified the passenger who attempted to hijack a Dubaibound flight on Sunday.

Mohammed Polash Ahmed tried to storm the cockpit about 15 minutes after takeoff on Sunday afternoon, forcing the pilot into making an emergency landing at the airport in Chittagong, Bangladesh, where the plane had been scheduled to make a stop.

Special forces troops later stormed the plane on the tarmac and fatally shot Ahmed.

MohammadMufti Mahmud Khan — a spokesman for the Rapid Action Battalion, a Bangladeshi police force made up of military personnel — said in an interview that investigators had taken Ahmed’s fingerprint and matched it in a criminal database.

Khan would not elaborate on the case against Ahmed, who lived in a district near Dhaka, the nation’s capital. But he said there was no evidence at this point that Ahmed had links to terrorist groups that have struck before in Bangladesh, a predominantly Muslim nation of about 160 million people.

“We are trying to get more information about his old case,” he said.

Officials said that during the standoff, the suspect told army officials that he wanted to speak with his wife and Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina.

Hasina had been in Chittagong, a large port city officially known as Chattogram, earlier on Sunday, but returned to Dhaka, about 150 miles northwest, before the hijacking attempt took place, the Dhaka Tribune said.

A senior official with Biman Bangladesh Airlines, speaking on condition of anonymity, said seven crew members and 143 passengers — including Ahmed, who was in his mid-30s — were aboard the plane that took off from Dhaka.