Educated, well-off, Dhaka attackers defy pattern

Associated Press

NEW DELHI

The young men had been missing for months. Their families sensed something was wrong.

It wasn’t until the horror of the weekend hostage crisis in Bangladesh’s capital unfolded that they learned their sons had become radicalized as religious extremists and launched one of the country’s deadliest attacks in recent years.

The young men, armed with knives, bombs and automatic firearms, engaged in a gunbattle with police, killing two and wounding more, then seized a popular restaurant in a Dhaka neighborhood Friday night and held some 35 people hostage. Over the next few hours, they would kill 20 of their captives – including nine Italians, seven Japanese, an Indian teenager and three students at American universities. A witness said some victims were tortured when they could not recite verses from the Quran.

“This is very painful. He killed innocent people,” said the aunt of one of the attackers, Rohan Imtiaz, whose father is a leader in Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s governing Awami League party.

“We sensed that Rohan was changing and his behavior increasingly became different,” she told the Associated Press in disbelief.

When Imtiaz went missing Dec. 31, as his mother and father were in India for medical treatment, the family asked the police to help find him.

“My brother went to everybody: police, ministers and higher authorities after he went missing,” said Rohan’s aunt, who refused to be identified by name. “He became just crazy after his son went missing. But nobody could help us.”

As details emerged of the men who laid siege to the Holey Artisan Bakery, it became clear that the attackers did not fit the typical profile for religious radicals coming from economically deprived backgrounds and latching onto extremist groups that promised a new future.

Most had come from privileged backgrounds, and were educated in top schools.

Some analysts said that’s what made them attractive as recruits; their backgrounds meant they would not raise suspicions.

“They do not fit the usual stereotype of the madrassa-educated youth,” said Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, a former Indian diplomat and policy expert on Bangladesh for the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank. “My suspicion is that these young men were roped in by spotters or recruiters.”

He said their defiance of the usual militant profile gave credibility to claims the attackers were part of a campaign waged by extremist groups abroad.