The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Officers in Bangladesh kill militant tied to bakery attack
HAKA, BANGLADESH — A Canadian man suspected of having planned a July attack on a bakery in Dhaka that left 22 people dead was killed in a shootout with the Bangladeshi police Saturday, officials said.
The man, Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, a 30-year-old Canadian citizen of Bangladeshi descent, was one of three militants killed in the raid outside Dhaka, the capital, the officials said.
Bangladeshi authorities have said Chowdhury planned the July 1 assault on the Holey Artisan Bakery, a restaurant popular with expatriates and middle-class Bangladeshis.
Some analysts believe Chowdhury acted as a coordinator for the Islamic State in Bangladesh and northeastern India. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for several recent attacks in Bangladesh, including the assault on the bakery.
Bangladeshi police, however, identified Chowdhury as the leader of a new branch of a domestic terrorist group, the Jama’atul Mujahedeen Bangladesh, and the government initially denied that the bakery attack had been carried out by members of foreign groups. Later, officials acknowledged that the attackers might have had links to such groups, including the Islamic State.
The shootout Saturday morning took place at a three-story house in the Narayanganj district near Dhaka, after police received a tip that the militants were hiding there, said AKM Kamrul Ahsan, a spokesman.
They were given a chance to surrender, but attacked the police with guns and grenades, at which point the police opened fire, said a police official, Inspector General AKM Shahidul Hoque, in televised comments to reporters Saturday. Both officials said Chowdhury was among the militants killed.
The police had offered cash bounties of about $25,000 this month for information leading to the arrest of Chowdhury and for another militant, Syed Mohammad Ziaul Haque, who was suspected of being involved in recent killings of secular writers.
Chowdhury’s name was on a list of 10 high-value suspects released by the Bangladeshi authorities last month after the Holey Artisan Bakery attack, an 11-hour siege carried out by five militants who were eventually killed by soldiers. Analysts said Chowdhury and two other Bangladeshi expatriates on that list could have been acting as links between local and international extremist groups.
The bakery siege was the most deadly in a series of attacks carried out by Islamist militants in Bangladesh over the past several years. The frequency of those attacks has increased in recent months.
Officials said they suspected Chowdhury was also behind a July 7 bombing at Bangladesh’s largest prayer gathering for the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which killed four people: two police officers, a civilian and a militant.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said Saturday in televised remarks to reporters that the identities of the two militants killed with Chowdhury would be released after an investigation, but that one of them appeared to be Chowdhury’s right-hand man.
It was not clear whether either of them was on the list of high-value suspects released last month.
“We think Tamim Chowdhury’s chapter has ended here,” Khan said. “We will be able to catch the rest of the militants soon.”