Ex -NSU lecturer Hasnat Reza Karim and University of Toronto student Tahmid Hasib Khan, two of the survivors of the 1 July Gulshan attack, were arrested by the police on Wednesday night.
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“We can confirm they were arrested under Section 54 of CrPC (criminal procedure)”, police spokesman A.K.M Shahidur Rahman told Agence France Presse, referring to a law under which police can detain someone for suspicion of any crime.
The two were among the 32 hostages rescued from the cafe, where the attackers killed 20 people, including 17 foreigners, bdnews24 reported.
Dhaka: Traceless for over a month, ex-private university teacher Hasnat Karim and Canadian university student Tahmid Hasib have been produced before court as suspects in Dhaka attack. Khan, a 22-year-old Bangladeshi citizen, was back in his homeland while on leave from his university in Canada.
However, a South Korean man from a nearby apartment recorded video of the scene, which allegedly shows Karim talking to the attackers.
Rodney Dixon QC, the family lawyer, said: “The authorities have finally admitted that Mr Karim is in their custody”.
Rahman said that police had applied to magistrates for permission to remand Karim and Khan in custody for 10 days but there has been no response to their application so far.
Bangladesh police have said they are investigating whether the attackers had links to the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for the attack.
The police assertion of arrests at different sites appeared to run counter to relatives’ statements that the men were held at unknown locations after the attack and denied access to a lawyer.
Later, he was under investigation for his alleged involvement with the banned Hizbut Tahrir.
Earlier this week, a Canadian citizen called Tamim Chowdhury was identified as the mastermind of the attack, and police offered a reward of up to $25,000 for any information leading to his arrest.
Speaking to AFP after news of the arrest, Karim’s father said his son had been used as a human shield during the siege and that he had helped save lives during the siege.
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Karim, who most recently was a director at his father’s engineering company in Dhaka, was at the cafe with his wife celebrating their daughter’s 13th birthday, his family have said. The claim was rejected by Bangladesh’s government, which said IS has no presence in the country and instead blamed a local radical group, Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh.
