NRB in Australia 'linked to IS'

Law enforcers have been looking for a Bangladeshi expatriate in Australia with suspected links to Islamic State (IS).

Abu Terek Mohammad Tajuddin Kausar, 35, who is from Laxmipur, left the country in 2006 to study computer science in Australia and later settled there, his mother Tahera Begum told The Daily Star yesterday.

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Tahera, a teacher at a local high school, lodged a general diary with Laxmipur Police Station on July 9 stating that she had not been able to contact her son for over a month.

Kausar is one of the 10 people whose names came up in the media as missing persons in the wake of the July 1 Gulshan café siege. He is also on the Rapid Action Battalion's list of 262 missing persons.

Masudur Rahman, deputy commissioner (media) of DMP, told this newspaper last night that police have long been looking for Kausar.

Tahera said Kausar, who to her knowledge is an IT professional in Australia, did not regularly contact her in the last couple of years.  However, when he called her during the first week of Ramadan (June), she asked him if he could send her some money.

“That's when he abruptly hung up the line and never called me again,” she said, adding she could not identify from where the call came from.

Before moving to Australia, he graduated in computer science from a private university in Dhaka, said his mother.  

She added the last time her son visited her was in 2013.

She also informed that Kausar married an Australian woman who converted to Islam before the marriage. The couple had a son and a daughter.

A report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) published on Wednesday said the whereabouts of Kausar were unknown.

The report added that a spokesperson of Australian Federal Police, when contacted regarding Kausar, refused to “comment on intelligence matters.”

Meanwhile, a New York Times report on Tuesday quoted a Bangladeshi senior intelligence official saying that Kausar was suspected to have served as one of the contact points between militants inside Bangladesh and organisers outside the country.

The report added that two to three dozen fighters had returned from Syria and were serving as operatives in Bangladesh. The intelligence official was further quoted as saying that they had returned after receiving training in Turkey, and a third group may be training within Bangladesh's borders.

According to a Daily Mail report on July 19, Additional Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Monirul Islam said last year that Kausar and two others were suspected recruiters for IS and they were being sought after by law enforcers.

The bloody siege at Holey Artisan Bakery, an upscale eatery at Gulshan, left 20 hostages -- nine Italian, seven Japanese, two Bangladeshis, one Indian and one Bangladesh-born US citizen – dead.

The armed attackers also bombed and killed two police officers who tried to end the siege soon after it began around 8:40pm on July 1.

According to The New York Times report that The Daily Star could not independently verify, two other suspects with IS links were Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, who is thought to have returned to Bangladesh from Canada in 2013, and Mohammad Saifullah Ojaki, a professor of business administration at a university in Japan.

Ojaki, who lived in Japan for many years, was born into a modest Hindu family in Bangladesh. He earned a scholarship and eventually taught business administration at a university in Kyoto, said the report.

“While living there, he underwent a transformation, changing his name and converting to Islam, said his father, Janardan Debnath. Mr Debnath said the family was staggered by the news of his conversion,” read the report.

Meanwhile, Tamim according to the report was believed by some analysts to act as a coordinator of the Islamic State's activities in Bangladesh and parts of northeast India.

He left Windsor, Ontario, Canada for Bangladesh in 2013 or some time after. Before he left Canada he complained to acquaintances of harassment from law enforcers, and his radical beliefs were criticised by leaders in his mosque.

Acquaintances described Tamim as “a nerdy kid who no one would have ever thought to take on a leadership role of any kind”, said the report quoting Amarnath Amarasingam, a fellow at George Washington University's Programme on Extremism, who tracks jihadist fighters from the West.