ISI, not IS, to blame, says Dhaka

DHAKA/KOLKATA: The attackers who slaughtered 20 hostages at a Dhaka restaurant were members of a “homegrown” terror outfit with links to Pakistan’s Inter Services

DHAKA/KOLKATA: The attackers who slaughtered 20 hostages at a Dhaka restaurant were members of a “homegrown” terror outfit with links to Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence, Bangladesh said on Sunday, as India stepped up border patrol to ward off any possible militant infiltration.

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Bangladesh home minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters the six assailants were well-educated men who found extremism “fashionable”, denying any associations with the Islamic State terror group.

The assailants stormed an upmarket café in Dhaka on Friday evening and killed 20 mostly foreigner host ages, including 19-year-old Tarishi Jain, before government forces ended the 12-hour siege.

Hours later, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it had targeted a gathering of “citizens of crusader states”.

But Bangladesh rejected the claim .“They are all Bangladeshis. They are from rich families, they have good educational background,” Khan said. “They have no connections with the Islamic State.”

He said the killers were members of the local outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a group banned over a decade ago. “This was done by JMB,” the minister said, adding that the gunmen made no demands.

Hossain Toufique Imam, political adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said that the way in which host ages were killed with machetes suggested a local group.

“Pakistan’s ISI and Jamaat connection is well known... they want to derail the current government,” Imam told a TV channel.

Three of the gunmen were identified by their former friends and one was said to be the son of a senior leader of the ruling Awami League.

Across the border, authorities sounded a high alert along the Indo-Bangla frontier in five states with the Border Security Force intensifying its vigil to prevent suspects from crossing over to India.

The administration has asked the state police to take serious note of any suspicious movement in the border districts. India and Bangladesh share a 4,096 km-long international border, the fifth-longest land border in the world that is known to be porous in places.

But confusion remained over the attackers’ identity after the SITE monitoring website posted pictures of five grinning fighters in front of a black flag and released their names, which didn’t match with those declared by Bangladeshi authorities.

There was mass condemnation of the killing in Dhaka, where flags were flown at half-mast at government offices while prayer services were held across the country.

PM Sheikh Hasina has vowed to find the “roots” of the attackers as two investigation and a bomb disposal team visited the restaurant to collect evidence attack.

But experts have pointed to growing radicalisation in the country as a possible reason behind the attacks, blaming the government’s apparent inability to tamp down on a wave of recent attacks on minorities and human rights workers. A Hindu priest’s gruesome murder was reported the same day as the café attack, following similar murders of gay rights activists, bloggers, journalists and minority community leaders in recent months.

The bodies of 20 hostages were found in pools of blood after commandos stormed the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka’s Gulshan diplomatic zone to end the standoff, in which two policemen were also shot dead in a fierce gun battle.

Six gunmen were killed by the commandos but one was taken alive and is being interrogated by Bangladeshi intelligence.

A Bangladeshi worker at the cafe who survived said how the attackers split the diners into groups of foreigners and locals, making clear that their targets were non-Muslims.

The worker also described the killers as appearing to be university-educated, a point echoed by Khan. “They are all highly educated young men and went to university. No one is from a madrassa,” the minister said. Asked why they would have become militants, Khan said, “It has become a fashion.”