Bangladesh denies blaming Pakistan for Dhaka attack, claims Indian media misreported

DHAKA: Bangladesh  claims that it had never blamed Pakistan for the Dhaka restaurant attack which killed 20, contrary to news published in Indian media.

Advisor to Bangladesh Prime Minister Gauhar Rivi in a telephone call to the Pakistan High Commissioner in Dhaka Shuja Alam denied that he had ever given a statement blaming Pakistan spy agency ISI for the attack.

“The statement is utter nonsense,” he said, adding that he had not spoken to any news channel over the issue.
Letter written to the Pakistan High Commission

Earlier the NDTV and several other news websites had quoted him blaming ISI for the attack.

Bangladesh on Sunday said the attackers who slaughtered 20 hostages at a restaurant were well-educated followers of a homegrown militant outfit who found extremism “fashionable”, denying links to the Islamic State.

As the country held services to mourn the victims of the siege in Dhaka, details emerged of how the attackers spared the lives of Muslims while herding foreigners to their deaths. And although the IS claimed responsibility for the attack at the Western-style cafe on Friday night, the government stuck to its line that international jihadist networks had not gained a foothold in Bangladesh.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told AFP the killers — six of whom were shot dead in the siege — were members of the homegrown militant outfit Jamaeytul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a group banned over a decade ago.“They have no connections with the Islamic State,” Khan said.

National police chief Shahidul Haque told reporters that investigators would explore the possibility of “an international link” but added that “primarily, we suspect they are JMB members”.

The bodies of 20 hostages were found in pools of blood after commandos stormed the Holey Artisan Bakery cafe to end the standoff, in which two policemen were also shot dead in a fierce gunbattle at its outset.

Six of the gunmen were killed by the commandos in the final stages of the siege, but one was taken alive and was being interrogated by Bangladeshi intelligence.Security officials said most of the victims — 18 of whom were foreigners — were slaughtered with sharpened machete-style weapons.

The attack, by far the deadliest of a recent wave of killings claimed by IS or a local Al-Qaeda offshoot, was carried out in the upmarket Gulshan neighbourhood, which is home to the country’s elite and many embassies.