From music to militancy
He had a passion for music from his childhood and loved to play guitar for his family and friends.
He also used to write down the lyrics of his favourite songs in a diary.
But things started to change four years ago when Mostafizur Rahman alias Sifat returned home in Khulna after staying in Dhaka for around eight months. Family members said he worked as a sub-assistant engineer at a private firm at the capital's Niketon in 2012. The company provides service in telecom engineering field.
The 27-year-old, who was arrested by the Rapid Action Battalion in Dhaka on August 10, had become a “dreaded militant” who was preparing to carry out suicide attacks, Rab said.
His family members said Sifat told them that he had been working as a freelancer since he returned from Dhaka. He used to stay up all night for the work.
“Sifat stopped playing guitar, started keeping a beard and spending hours almost every day in our local mosques after he returned from Dhaka. He also stopped communicating with his friends,” Sifat's younger brother Mafuzur Rahman Shakil told The Daily Star yesterday.
Sifat's sister Samsunnahar Ratna said, “He used to sing while playing guitar. But we don't know what happened in his life that turned him away from music.”
Sifat started sharing international militants' activities with family members and friends and he always endorsed the atrocities carried out by international militant outfits, particularly the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
According to Rab, Sifat is a leader of banned militant outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) and he was arrested along with five other “suicide attackers”.
He had been working as an administrator of At-tamkin webpage which propagated many of the recent killings and terrorist attacks in the country, Rab claimed, adding that the webpage is run mainly by Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).
Some of his family members and friends said Sifat might have been influenced by someone during his stay in Dhaka.
Sifat's mother Sajeda Begum, however, does not believe that her son is a militant. She claimed that her son was arrested “as he became religious”.
Sifat's family members also alleged that unidentified people picked up Sifat from BIDC Road in Khulna city's Khalishpur area on July 25.
While working as a freelancer, Sifat became well-versed in information technology and there is a chance that his radicalisation began while browsing through the websites of militant outfits, they said.
Son of a security guard at Khulna Power Plant, Sifat studied at Khulna Government Polytechnic Institute until 2011.
After returning to Khulna from Dhaka, he got enrolled in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) department at North Western University in Khulna.
One of his classmates, who worked with Sifat in preparing a thesis paper titled “Smart Light Control System”, said Sifat was different from other classmates and a bit introvert.
Masud Rana, a lecturer of EEE and supervisor of the thesis paper, said Sifat was attentive in class and there was nothing special that could separate him from other students.
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