Bangladesh ruling party leader's son identified among hostage-takers

DHAKA:  Three of the gunmen who slaughtered 20 people in the Bangladeshi capital city have been identified by their former friends after their photographs were released with one of them named by an Awami League leader as Rohan Ibne Imtiaz, the son of another leader of the ruling party's city unit, even as the attack which left mostly foreigners dead was owned by the Islamic State terror group.

Rohan has been recognised as the son of S.M. Imtiaz Khan Babul, a leader of the party's Dhaka City chapter and Bangladesh Olympic Association's deputy secretary general. Babul had lodged a police complaint on January 4 this year stating that his son was missing. "We have identified him (Rohan) as Imtiaz Babul's son after going through the pictures that came up in the media and on Facebook," Mukul Chowdhury, a vice-president of the recently defunct Awami League's Dhaka City unit committee, told bdnews24.com. One of the militants, Nibras Islam, was recognised by his former classmates in the privately-run North South University in Dhaka. An expatriate Bangladeshi has posted on Facebook a photo of one Mir Sabih Mubashsher along with the photo of an attacker. He quoted one of Mubashsher's classmates in Scholastica School in Dhaka as saying that Mubashsher went missing in March before his A-Level exam. A Mahbub Rajib posted a family photo of Rohan Imtiaz also from Scholastica, known as a school for the children of the well-to-do in Dhaka. Imtiaz Babul was the youth and sports secretary of the same committee Chowdhury had served. The Awami League currently rules the country and is one of the two largest political parties of Bangladesh. Former classmates have uploaded a photo combo in the social media of Rohan with his parents and a photo -- reportedly released by the Islamic State -- that monitoring group SITE Intelligence published on Twitter as one of the Dhaka cafe attackers. The hostage crisis at the cafe at Dhaka's upscale Gulshan neighbourhood ended in bloodbath after army commandos raided and freed 13 hostages. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the macabre killing of the 20 people, mostly foreigners, in a cafe in Dhaka on Friday evening. Terrorism observer group SITE published the photos of the attackers on Saturday night. Police have also released photos of the gunmen killed during the raid. Police chief A.K.M. Shahidul Hoque said five of the dead gunmen were listed as militants and police had been looking for them. Police identified them as “Akash”, “Bikash”, “Don”, “Bandhon” and “Ripon”.