An Islamic State video released on the internet days after the barbarous Dhaka terror attack has Bangladeshi model Naila Nayem's former husband Tushar among the three men who appear in it, said government sources.
The Islamic State video, that surfaced on Tuesday, showed three Bangla-speaking men praising the Islamist terrorists who massacred 20 hostages and two Bangladeshi policemen at the Holey Artisan Bakery and O'Kitchen Restaurant. The video also threatened more of such attacks.
Tushar, with a long beard in the video, is the son of late Bangladesh Army Major Washikur Azad. He married Nayem in 2011 but later they separated. He is a resident of Baridhara Defence Officers Housing Scheme in Dhaka, reported bdnews24.com.
A dentist by profession, Tushar was missing since last two years. He completed secondary education at Adamjee Cantonment Public School and higher secondary at RAJUK Uttara Model College in Bangladesh.
The other man in the video, who has his face covered with Arabic-styled headdress, has been identified by government sources as Tawsif Hossain, a former student of the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) at Dhaka University. He left the university without completing the course.
Hossain was arrested earlier on charges of suspected involvement with the Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). Later his family sent him to Austria but his friends there said he was not to be found there.
The third man in the video is Tahmid Rahman Shafi, former Grameenphone official and son of former Election Commissioner Shafiur Rahman, said his former colleagues and classmates in Dhaka's Notre Dame College.
Shafi, among the top 10 finalists of NTV's reality music show Closeup 1 in 1995, completed his BBA at BRAC University and MBA at IBA, said sources in the government.
The sources also said that Shafi had once requested his father to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) but he refused. After which he left with his wife for war-torn Syria.
The video is claimed to have been shot in al-Raqqah, the so-called capital of IS in Syria. Shafi is the one among the three who translated his speech into English.
The video starts with the militant group's propaganda messages, with sub-titles in Bangla and Arabic, and boasted of death tolls from numerous terror attacks it has claimed to have engineered.
"The jihad in Bangladesh, the one you are witnessing now, is nothing like anything you have seen before," said the first of the three Bangla-speaking men, who has been identified as Shafi, in his 'message' for the Bangladesh government.
He then spoke in English for the 'Christian and Jewish crusaders and their allies' to tell that their leader 'Sheikh Adnani' was not joking when he asked them to wage a war.
Referring to the attack on the bakery-cum-restaurant in the upscale Gulshan locality of Dhaka, he said: "What you witnessed in Bangladesh yesterday was just a glimpse, this will repeat, repeat and repeat until you lose and we win ..."
One of the men in the Islamic State video said they would not stop until establishing Shariah law all over the world, reported the Dhaka Tribune.
--IANS
ss/rn/dg
