'Mastermind' of Bangladesh cafe siege killed

DHAKA:

An extremist accused of being one of the masterminds of last year's deadly siege at a Bangladeshi cafe was shot dead during a pre-dawn raid on Friday in Dhaka, police said.

The bodies of Nurul Islam Marzan and another suspected extremist were found after officers raided a property in the capital's Rayer Bazar neighbourhood, a spokesperson for the Dhaka Metropolitan Police told AFP.

"We found two bodies. One of them was Marzan and another was a suspected extremist," additional deputy commissioner Yusuf Ali told AFP.

Ali said that Marzan, who was aged around 30, was "one of the masterminds" of the siege at the upmarket Holey Artisan Bakery on July 1 last year in which 18 foreign hostages were shot or hacked to death.

Mohibul Islam Khan, the deputy chief of Dhaka police's counter terrorism and transnational crime unit, told AFP that Marzan was shot dead during the raid by the anti-terrorism police.

Khan said Marzan was an Arabic student at Chittagong University before he dropped out and joined an offshoot of Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a homegrown extremist group which has been blamed for the cafe attack.

"Along with Tamim (Ahmed Chowdhury), Marzan planned the Gulshan attack," he said, referring to the Canadian citizen of Bangladesh descent who police described as the main mastermind of the attack.

Chowdhury was killed in another in another raid outside the capital in August last year.

Police intelligence had found that Marzan organised the cafe siege and was its operational commander, said Khan.

The Islamic State (IS) organisation claimed responsibility for the cafe attack, posting images of the carnage as it happened and photos of the gunmen who had posed with the IS's black flag.

Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of attacks on foreigners, rights activists and members of religious minorities.

While many of those attacks have been claimed by IS or Al Qaeda, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's secular government has blamed local militants, denying that international militants have gained a foothold in Bangladesh.

The country's security forces launched a deadly crackdown against extremists following the cafe siege, which badly undermined Bangladesh's reputation as a relatively moderate Muslim nation.

Since the cafe attack, security forces have shot around 50 extremists including most of the alleged kingpins of JMB.

Critics say Hasina's administration is in denial about the nature of the threat posed by extremists and accuse her of trying to exploit the attacks to demonise her domestic opponents.

Last September US Secretary of State John Kerry said during a visit to Dhaka that there was evidence to link the extremists behind the recent spate of deadly attacks in Bangladesh to IS.