Dhaka cafe attack: 'Mastermind' Tamim Chowdhury, leader of banned JMB, killed in encounter

Bangladesh police stormed a militant hideout just outside Dhaka on Saturday, shooting dead three Islamist extremists, including the suspected mastermind, Bangladeshi-born canadian citizen Tamim Chowdhury of an attack on a cafe that killed 22 mostly foreign hostages last month. [caption id=“attachment_2979118” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image of Dhaka cafe attack. AP[/caption] “We can see three dead bodies here,” senior police officer Sanwar Hossain told AFP. “Tamim Chowdhury is dead. He is the Gulshan attack mastermind and the leader of JMB (Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh),” he said, referring to a Bangladeshi-Canadian citizen believed to be behind the attack on the cafe in Dhaka  when the terrorists killed 22 people, among them 17 foreigners including an Indian and two police officers. A Bangladeshi newspaper earlier reported that Chowdhury appeared as the leader and main financer of a reorganised Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). Bangladesh earlier attributed the two attacks to the clandestine outfit. The report suggested that Chowdhury was working as the link between the reorganised JMB and the Islamic State, which claimed the responsibility for the 1 July attack said to be the deadliest terror attack in Bangladesh so far. Chowdhury had returned to Bangladesh from Canada three years ago in 2013, before he staged the attack at an upscale bakery in the Gulshan area of Bangladesh, according to The Times of India. He had since then led and financed efforts to radicalise young Muslims, the report said. Police earlier staged an hour-long gun battle with extremists at Paikpara in Narayanganj, a city 25 kilometres (16 miles) south of Dhaka, Hossain said. Bangladesh national police chief AKM Shahidul Hoque told AFP police were “99 percent sure” that Tamim Chowdhury was in the hideout when police launched the assault. Bangladesh earlier said they found no proof of IS link to the country’s terrorist attacks. With inputs from AFP