Toronto student arrested in Dhaka
POLICE SUSPECT ROLE IN ISIL TERROR ATTACK
More than a month after he survived a terrorist massacre at a Dhaka bakery, police in Bangladesh have formally arrested Tah-mid Hasib Khan, a Canadian student they suspect of co-operating with attackers of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Khan, 22, a permanent resident of Canada who was studying global health at the University of Toronto, travelled to Bangladesh for a vacation with his family the day before the July 1 attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery in the diplomatic quarter of the country’s capital.
If the police suspicions are borne out, it suggests an ISIL operative spent his last days of freedom in the heart of Canada’s largest city, preparing to commit mass murder abroad — and likely die in the process, just as all but one of the known attackers did.
But Khan has not been formally charged, and no evidence against him has been presented. His detention has been the subject of protest by the Canadian government, the university, NGOs, and his friends, not least for the denial of legal counsel and medical care for epilepsy. Now, with news of his arrest, his family issued a statement accusing police of a “blatant lie” that wrongly casts an innocent victim as a terrorist murderer.
His arrest, announced jointly with the arrest of another man similarly held incommunicado since the attack, sets an eight-day clock ticking for their interrogation by a special counter-terrorism police unit. It also comes a few days after a delegation of top Canadian security intelligence officials visited counterparts in Dhaka, with the attack investigation top of the agenda.
A letter in the University of Toronto student paper The Varsity, by Khan’s friends Josh Grondin and Rusaro Nyinawumwami, describes him as an avid soccer player who supports Real Madrid, and was planning to do charity work this summer in Nepal with UNICEF.
“Hostages said that during the night Tahmid and others were forced to hold unloaded weapons and act as decoys,” they wrote.
“Tahmid broke down in tears and initially refused, but he was forced at gunpoint to obey orders.
“The hostages also said Tahmid persuaded the gunmen to release a group of them — they escaped just before the army raided. In his bravery, Tahmid helped to save seven lives.”
The attack, claimed by ISIL, killed 20 hostages in the café, 17 of them foreigners — nine Italians, seven Japanese and an Indian, along with two Bangladeshi police officers.
Reports suggest victims were told to recite Qur’anic verses, and were hacked to death if they could not. When special forces moved in the following morning, they killed six terrorists and captured one, Rakibul Hasan, 25.
Both Khan and the other arrested survivor, Hasnat Karim, were detained at the
THE HOSTAGES SAID TAHMID PERSUADED THE GUNMEN TO RELEASE A GROUP OF THEM.
scene, despite being identified as hostages. Both were said to have acted suspiciously, according to police.
Khan was arrested Wednesday at a house in an upscale residential district of Dhaka.
Karim, 47, a Bangladeshiborn British citizen, was arrested in a different location. A former teacher at the private North South University, who spent 20 years in the U.K., is said to have left the café even before commandos stormed it, and was captured on video talking and smoking with the attackers. One of the dead attackers has since been identified as his former student.
The Canadian government did not immediately have a comment on the arrest, and has been limited in what it can do by Khan’s lack of citizenship, although it has said it raised the issue with the government in Dhaka.
But Bangladeshi security officials have reason to be wary of Canada’s role in the radicalization of ISIL terrorists.
Earlier this week, they posted a reward for information leading to the arrest of Tamim Chowdhury, 30, a Canadian citizen whose father immigrated to Canada in the 1970s.
Chowdhury is thought to have returned to Bangladesh three years ago, after graduating in 2011 from the University of Windsor, and now leads ISIL in Bangladesh. Police allege he masterminded the bakery attack.
Bangladeshi officials had previously downplayed ISIL’s claim of responsibility, saying it is not at work in their country, and the attack was more closely related to domestic politics.