Police boss refutes IS existence in Bangladesh

Pulling reference to the latest claim of Islamic State existence in Bangladesh, the country’s police boss maintained the claim that there is no presence of the Islamist terrorist outfit here.

“These are baseless propaganda. What we call militants are actually homegrown who might have been embodied with IS philosophy and ideology. But they don’t have any link with the IS,” said AKM Shahidul Hoque, inspector general of police.

The IGP was referring to Prof Rohan Gunaratna, an international security expert, who asserted on the presence of IS in Bangladesh and that the outfit carried out the Gulshan café attack.

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“Rohan is not a police officer, nor a military officer. He does not deal with any security issue. He is an academician, a professor of a university. He has done his academic research on his own. But he does not have experience of the real issue of Bangladesh,” said AKM Shahidul Hoque, inspector general of police.

“Many people of the group were arrested and in our custody. Not a single of them claimed to be the members of IS. Even the family members of the slain militants did not say they are IS members,” the IGP said.

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“None of them have taken training from IS,” he said adding that they might have followed the ideology of IS and footprints in the virtual world, especially through social media.

The IGP further said, “IS claimed credit of the Gulshan attack. Many [militants] of them were killed in operations following the incident but IS did not claim that those militants are members of IS,” he added.

“What Mr Rohan said is his own statement. We don’t endorse his statement,” the IGP said.