Holey Artisan Attack
Some unanswered questions
A year after the Holey Artisan terrorist attack, mourning the untimely deaths of the victims, we have not sufficiently focused on two names. Besides the patrons of the café, there were two more individuals who were as much victims of the attack: Saiful Chowkidar, a pizza chef at the bakery, and Zakir Hossain Shaon, who used to do the dishes. They were both initially claimed to be suspects, but later investigations pointed to the contrary. The police is yet to make a clear statement about their innocence or guilt. And if they are innocent, as nothing has been found against them, it is important that their names be delinked from the taint of being associated with the attack and proper respect be shown to them.
Here's what we know from the numerous reports by local and international newspapers and agencies following the attack. Shaon, aged 19, managed to escape from inside the bakery a long time before the early morning raid by commandos. Pictures and video footage showed him being taken by law enforcement, his chest bloody. The pictures do not show a person critically injured, but someone who had just escaped with his life. Two days later, he was taken to the DMCH, where he died on July 8, a week after the attack ("Detained kitchen staff dies of injuries", The Daily Star, July 10, 2016). Hospital and morgue sources said Shaon suffered "splinter wounds" and there were "marks of beating" on his body ("Confusion follows death of 2 staff", The Daily Star, July 11, 2016).
In the meantime, his family had been frantically searching for him. By the time they heard of him being admitted in DMCH and visited him there, he was close to death. His mother, distraught, told reporters that her son bore assault marks and swellings all over his body. Parents and family members, who saw him there, told newspapers that Shaon "seemed to have lost his mind and kept saying, 'Please don't hit me anymore.'" ("Confusion follows death of 2 staff", The Daily Star). Police officials told the media initially that Shaon was on the suspect list, but the case that was filed in connection with the attack did not mention his name. The last his mother heard from him was when he called her hours before the attack to say that he received his Eid bonus and would be going home soon.
Saiful Chowkidar, the pizza chef, died on July 2 during the commando raid. What little information we have also points to him being a collateral victim, and not one of the militants. He was not among the five who entered and started the armed siege of the café. Subsequent reports have named him among the 22 victims and not the five attackers. After the siege, he was however named as one of the militants in the case ("Confusion follows death of 2 staff", The Daily Star).
When his death was reported, a staff of Holey who was there during the siege, on condition of anonymity, told The Daily Star: "As the pizza maker, Saiful worked at the entrance of the bakery and he was probably the first to be attacked and beaten by the gunmen. Seeing this, most of us ran into the bathroom." He claimed to have seen a gunman pointing his gun at Saiful when he and eight others were forced out of the bathroom by other militants ("Confusion follows death of 2 staff", The Daily Star).
On the other hand, four days after the attack, Reuters reported, quoting a police official investigating the attack, that one of the men shot dead during the siege may have been a hostage killed by mistake: "Confusion over exactly how many gunmen were involved was at least partly cleared up on Tuesday, when police named Saiful Islam Chowkidar, a pizza maker at the Holey Artisan Bakery, as among the six people security forces killed when they stormed the building to end a 12-hour stand-off."
"He may not be involved," Saiful Islam, a police official investigating the attack, told Reuters, adding Chowkidar's death was still being investigated. "In the police filing Chowkidar's name was included among 21 hostages killed by [the] attackers" ("Bangladesh police say may have shot hostage, missed attack warnings", Reuters, July 5, 2016).
A year after the incident we need to know the details of the death in custody of Shaon, and clarification of Chowkidar's role. We had heard after the raid that the police were looking into whether Chowkidar had any militant ties. What have they found? These are questions which should have been answered. Shaon's death and his parents' allegations point towards torture in custody of someone who seems to have been as much a victim of the attack as the others. After a year, it should have been resolved and communicated if Chowkidar's death was an accident or part of the raid to kill the militants.
Alongside those we have remembered and paid tribute to in the past few days, Shaon and Chowkidar too deserve to be shown the same respect. Instead, what we witnessed was indifference, as Shaon's mother was barred from entering the memorial this July 1, and only allowed to do so after journalists intervened ("A mother's quest for justice, answers", The Daily Star, July 2, 2017). There is also mostly silence when it comes to Chowkidar. In the aftermath of countrywide crackdown on militants, the questions raised by HT Imam, political adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, have been forgotten too. He told Reuters on July 5, 2016 that it needs to be looked into "whether there was an intelligence failure" and that the "way the police and the RAB acted in the early hours raises questions". The law enforcement narratives of the attack have only focused on heroics of the day and not on the security failure and the backdrop which led to the attack.
A year on, these are the questions we want answers to, alongside how and why the two restaurant employees died, and to ensure that they not be one day falsely branded along with the terrorists or become nameless victims among many others whom we have forgotten.
The writer is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star.