GULSHAN CAFE ATTACK Police find no involvement of Japanese-Bangladeshi Saifullah

The Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police on Saturday said that it found no evidence of involvement of Bangladeshi-origin Japanese Muhammad Saifullah Ozaki, a suspected extremist, in the July 1 Gulshan café attack.
At a press conference at DMP Media Centre, counter terrorism unit chief Monirul Islam, however, said that Saifullah arranged travels of few Bangladeshis to Syria.
None of the arrested suspects in the attack on Holey Artisan talked about him, he said.
He also trashed the report of Bangladeshi-origin Swedish journalist Tasneem Khalil that said that Saifullah was behind the cafe attack.
Tasneem reported in a Bangladeshi daily that Sajit Debnath converted to Islam and changed his name as Muhammad Saifullah Ozaki and he was most likely Islamic State-appointed amir in Bangladesh.
Saifullah was former associate professor at Ritsumeikan University. Bangladeshi intelligence officers told New Age recently that he travelled to Bulgaria along with his small family from Japan and might have joined Islamic State in Syria.
Counter-terrorism officials said that Saifullah, an ex-cadet, went to Japan for higher studies where he converted to Islam and reunited many of his cadet college friends and fellows on a Facebook page which he used to administrate.
They said that at least three Bangladesh travelled to Syria with the help of Saifullah and he was last seen in Syria.
Monirul said that they came to know about Saifullah in May 2015 after the capture of Aminul Islam Baig, graduated in Malaysia and was captured in Dhaka during employment at a subsidiary of Coca-Cola on suspicion of planning to fight for Islamic State in Syria.
Bangladesh and Japan shared information about Saifullah but Japan could not arrest him due to lack of ‘enough evidence’, the officials said.
The police registered a case against Saifullah with Uttara West police station on May 24, 2015.
Morinul said that Saifullah visited Bangladesh twice after his being converted to Islam but was isolated from his relatives and parents.
He said that they were now starting the formalities of preparing the charge sheet in Gulshan café attack case as they captured another key suspect, Aslam Hossain Rashed alias Rash alias Abu Jarra, 20, at Singra Bazar bus stop in Natore on Friday.
Rashed was a close associate of Bangladeshi-Canadian Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, reportedly the coordinator of a ‘faction of the banned extremist outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh’ before he was killed along with two of his fellows in a joint operation in Narayanganj on August 27, 2016.
Rashed, hailed from Manda upazila in Naogaon.
Monirul said Rashed was motivated by one Rajshahi University student Shariful Islam Khaled, a leader of the JMB faction who had threatened his teacher AFM Rezaul Karim. Rezaul Karim was killed near his house in April 2016. 
On Saturday, Dhaka metropolitan magistrate Nurunnahar Yesmin remanded Rashed for six days in police custody for interrogation in the Gulshan café attack case.
Rashed had no lawyer to defend him in the hearing. 
Rashed’s reported mother Nasima Khatun claimed the name of her son to be Aslam Ali Mohon, who went missing on June 17, 2016 [Ramadan 11], two weeks before the café attack, from a mess while he was studying at Rajshahi Model College. 
The extremist attack on the Gulshan cafe left 29 people, including 17 foreigners, two police officials and five suspects, killed on July 1.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net