Extremist group killed Cesare Tavella in 2015: HM

Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan on Tuesday in a national conference revealed that an extremist group started targeted killings with murdering Italian aid worker Cesare Tavella in September 2015 and then they killed Japanese national Kunio Hoshi in Rangpur.

‘This country is a peace-loving country . . . but suddenly targeted killing started. Italian national Tevella Cesare was killed . . . Then we saw more killings, including that of a Japanese national who got mixed with Bangladeshi community,’ the minister said.

He was addressing the concluding session of a two-day national conference on countering violent terrorism at International Convention City Bashundhara in Dhaka on Tuesday.

He said, ‘They then killed an imam of a Shia mosque. They tried to kill a priest at a Christian church.  They had killed a monk in Bandarban and attacked an ISKCON temple in Panchagarh. We have analysed those attacks, they were carried out by local extremists,’ the minister added.

The responsibilities of all the attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group at the times of the incidents but the then Detective Branch officials prosecuted opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party leaders and their followers for the killing of Italian national in September 2015 and arrested BNP leaders for the Japanese killing.

Tavella was shot dead in Dhaka’s diplomatic enclave, Gulshan, on his way home on September 28. Five days later, 65-year-old Japanese farmer Kunio Hoshi was shot dead near his farmhouse in Rangpur on October 3 in a similar attack.

At the time, all law-enforcement agencies but the Rapid Action Battalion claimed that the Italian national was killed by the opposition BNP prompting Japanese authorities to conduct their investigation.

On October 28, 2015, home affairs minister Asaduzzaman Khan claimed that Dhaka city BNP’s leader MA Quayum was one of the suspects who masterminded the murder of Italian citizen Cesare Tavella in Dhaka.

But Quayum’s brother MA Matin was charged with the murder along with six others and the trial of the case was now pending with a court in Dhaka.

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina in a cabinet meeting on October 5, 2015 also hinted at involvement of local BNP leaders in the killing of Japanese national Hoshi Kunio in Rangpur on October 3.

Rangpur Special Judge Naresh Chandra Sarker on February 28, 2017 sentenced to death five members of an Islamic State-inspired faction of the banned extremist outfit Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh for killing the Japanese citizen.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net