The gunmen stormed the restaurant in Dhaka’s diplomatic zone late on Friday and killed 20 people, majority foreigners from Italy, Japan, India and the United States, in an assault claimed by Islamic State.
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However, media wing of ISIS had identified five of the dead attackers, according to intel group named SITE.
Bangladesh police have said they are investigating whether the attackers had links to the Islamic State group, though the home minister insisted IS had no presence in Bangladesh and could not have guided the attack.
Saiful Islam Chowkidar, a pizza-maker at the Holey Artisan restaurant, was among the six people security forces killed when they stormed the building.
Police on Tuesday also registered a case against five of the six dead attackers, Islam said, which they need to do to begin formal investigations which includes questioning of their families. “He may not be involved”.
A café employee, shown a photo of a man killed at the eatery and wearing a chef’s outfit, identified him as Chowkidar and said he had worked there for 18 months.
The JMB has been accused of involvement in numerous killings over the past year and police officer Islam said police were interrogating more than 130 of its members already in custody in the hope of gleaning clues.
Some of the hostage are being quizzed by the police to get useful information in tracing the origins of the attack.
The Italian Foreign Ministry, after nine Italians were killed in the restaurant, posted travel advisories saying it could not exclude the possibility of further attacks in Bangladesh.
Relatives of Mr Chowkider said they recognised him among the pictures of suspected attackers that police had released. Two of the other terrorists were also students at Scholastica.
As the country flew flags at half-mast and held prayers services and candle-lit vigils to mourn the victims, details emerged of how the attackers, five of whom authorities had tried to arrest previously, spared the lives of Muslims while herding foreigners to their deaths. With nearly 160 million Sunni Muslims, including a demographic bulge of young people, Bangladesh is fast turning into a potential recruiting ground for global jihadists like the Islamic State.
He said there were cases against all of them, but denied any intelligence failures ahead of the assault on the cafe, which came after a major crackdown that saw around 11,000 people arrested, some of them known Islamist extremists.
As the body of Indian teenager Tarishi Jain was consigned to the fkames in Delhi by her distraught family on Monday, and Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina led her nation in paying homage to the 20 hostages who were butchered on friday night in the Bangladeshi capital, the reason for the 12 hour delay before Bangladeshi forces launched a rescue operation is not the only development that has set off a furore in Dhaka.
Rohan’s father, a mid-ranking leader of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s ruling party, had lodged a complaint in January that he had gone missing since December 30, 2015, a police officer said.
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On Sunday, authorities said they believed the gunmen involved were “highly educated” and from “well-off families”.
