'IS Video': Narrator is Safi: DMP

The narrator of the recent video purportedly by Islamic State featuring the five Dhaka attackers is Tahmid Rahman Safi, a Bangladeshi man now reportedly in IS stronghold Syria, police said.

Investigators came to the conclusion through matching the voice on the video with voice recognition software, Monirul Islam, chief of the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said yesterday.

Safi is the son of former election commissioner and home secretary late Safiur Rahman.

The 32-year-old was a singer and made it to the top 15 in the first season of the country's popular talent hunt show Close Up 1, his friends earlier said.

He was also the first man seen in a video released soon after the July 1 Gulshan attack praising the attackers.

Tahmid left the country on April 23 last year, saying he was going on a honeymoon, his family members said at the time.

On September 23, the SITE Intelligence Group, a US-based organisation that monitors terrorist activities, said that the IS released a video from Bangladesh for the first time about the Holey Artisan attackers.

“IS Releases First Video from Bangladesh, Focuses on Dhaka Attackers,” the group tweeted.

The five attackers -- Nibras Islam, Rohan Imtiaz, Meer Mubasheer, Khairul Islam Payel and Shafiqul Islam Uzzal -- stormed the Holey Artisan restaurant and killed 20 hostages, 17 of them foreigners. They were later killed in an army operation.

In the video, in which they appear to have spoken before the attack, they are heard threatening that they would target anyone who they call the “enemies of Islam”.