[The
authorities in Dhaka are still investigating the attack. On Sunday, they
granted bail and released Tahmid Hasib Khan, a Bangladeshi man who had been
held hostage in the restaurant and was arrested immediately after the ordeal on
suspicion of conspiring with the attackers.]
By Ellen
Barry and Maher Sattar
 |
|
A police checkpoint near the site of a bloody
siege in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in July.
Credit Roberto Schmidt/Agence France-Presse —
Getty Images
|
NEW
DELHI — An Islamic State publication offered a detailed account of the bloody
July 1 siege of a restaurant in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, including the
use of religious tests to distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims, who would then
be killed.
The
article, which appeared this week and also threatened further attacks in the
country, bears the byline of Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, a militant who was killed
with two associates in a police raid in late August. Mr. Chowdhury, a Canadian
citizen, had been identified by some analysts as the coordinator of the Islamic
State’s activities in South Asia but had never been named by the group.
It is
unusual for the Islamic State to publish the real names of its fighters, said
Amarnath Amarasingam, a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on
Extremism. Mr. Amarasingam said the Islamic State has been eager to “take
ownership” of the Dhaka attack, which came at a time of military setbacks in
its core territory in the Middle East.
Since
Mr. Chowdhury’s death, there has been a lull in the small-scale attacks on
foreigners, secular Bangladeshis and members of religious minorities that had
occurred at regular intervals in recent years.
The July
attack, on the Holey Artisan Bakery, in which 22 people were killed, was the
most complex and large-scale operation to date by Islamic militants in
Bangladesh’s recent history. Among the dead were numerous foreigners working in
Bangladesh’s garment sector or for aid organizations.
In the
aftermath of the attack, Bangladesh officials were under pressure to
acknowledge that transnational terrorist organizations like the Islamic State
were trying to build a presence in the country.
The
authorities in Dhaka are still investigating the attack. On Sunday, they
granted bail and released Tahmid Hasib Khan, a Bangladeshi man who had been
held hostage in the restaurant and was arrested immediately after the ordeal on
suspicion of conspiring with the attackers.
A second
hostage, Hasnat Karim, remains in police custody, though some of the charges
against him have been dismissed in court.
Sharmina
Parveen Karim, Mr. Karim’s wife, said she hoped her husband would be released
soon. “We are just waiting,” she said. “We can’t do anything but wait.”
The
article published in the new edition of Rumiyah, the Islamic State’s newest
media product, said the Holey Artisan Bakery had been selected as a target
because it was “a sinister place where the Crusaders would gather to drink
alcohol and commit vices throughout the night, feeling secure from the wrath of
Allah that was awaiting them.”
It said
the attackers set out to kill only non-Muslims in the restaurant and sorted
their prisoners by religion, asking “very basic religious questions whose
answers any Muslim youth or elderly would know.”
“Those
who proved their Islam were treated with respect and mercy,” the account says,
while those who did not “were treated with harshness and severity.”
The
account partially tallied with the testimonies of survivors. A Bangladeshi cook
who survived said gunmen told him not to worry, because the attackers were
killing only foreigners.
Ms.
Karim, who was dining at the restaurant with her husband and two children, said
the attackers had targeted Japanese and Italian customers who were obvious
foreigners at first, and later began to ask those who remained whether they
were Bangladeshi Muslims.
“They
entered and started shooting straight away,” she said. “People were screaming,
‘Help, help,’ and fell to the floor once they were shot. Once they were certain
that people were injured, they started to chop their throats, hands.”
Ms.
Karim added that as dawn approached, the attackers debated whether to kill the
remaining hostages and decided against it.
The
article gives detailed biographies of the five attackers, noting that at least
two had unsuccessfully tried to join Islamic State forces in Libya, Syria and
other battlegrounds outside Bangladesh. It goes on to threaten further attacks
on foreigners in Bangladesh, singling out “expats, tourists, diplomats, garment
buyers, missionaries, sports teams and anyone else from the Crusader citizens
to be found in Bengal.”
Masudur
Rahman, a police spokesman, said that he had not read the Islamic State
publication but that investigators had not found any links between Mr.
Chowdhury’s militant network and the Islamic State. He said the police in
Bangladesh had killed at least a dozen known militants since the restaurant
siege.
“The way
we see it, looking at the number of people we’ve arrested, and then adding that
up with the number of people who have been killed in our raids, of course the
militants’ operation is weaker,” he said.
Follow
Ellen Barry on Twitter @EllenBarryNYT.
