Briton held for Dhaka cafe attack

Bangladesh police escort former North South University teacher Hasnat Karim and Canadian university student Tahmid Hasib in Dhaka. (Photo: AFP)

A British national and a student at a Canadian university, who were dining at a Bangladeshi cafe when it was besieged by jihadists in July, have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the attack.

Police said Hasnat Karim, a British citizen of Bangladesh origin, and Tahmid Khan, a University of Toronto student, were arrested late on Wednesday in connection with July’s siege in Dhaka when 20 hostages were murdered.

“We can confirm they were arrested under Section 54 of CrPC (criminal procedure),” police spokesperson A.K.M Shahidur Rahman told AFP on Thursday, referring to a law under which the police can detain someone for suspicion of any crime.

A court later remanded both men in custody for eight days, deputy commissioner of Dhaka police Aminur Rahman told AFP.

Karim and Khan were both inside the Holey Artisan Bakery when gunmen raided the cafe on the night of July 1, taking a group of mainly Western diners hostage and then killing 20 of them, along with two policemen.

But neither man has been seen in public since the end of the siege when commandos stormed the cafe in the capital’s upmarket Gulshan neighbourhood on the morning of July 2.

The two men’s families have said they were being held by security forces even though there was no evidence to link them to the attackers.

The police had denied the men were in their custody before announcing the arrest on Thursday.

Speaking to AFP after news of the arrest, Karim’s father said his son had been used as a human shield by the attackers during the siege.