Dhaka: Even as Bangladesh government rejected the involvement of Islamic state claiming that the attackers who brutally killed 20 people at a posh eatery in Dhaka, were homegrown terrorist with no connection to the terror group, possible links have emerged.
Photographs of the terrorists released by the ISIS appear to tally with the terrorists gunned down by the security forces after an 11-hour siege.
The government has said that all of the attackers were well-educated and most came from wealthy families.
"They are all highly educated young men and went to university," said Bangladesh's Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan to news agency AFP.
"The terrorists were from a top school and University in Dhaka... Some of the terrorists were from the Scholastic School -- a very well-known school and private university. The parents of these boys are normal and have secular credentials," Bangladesh Information and Broadcasting minister Hassanul Haq Inna.
Very little has emerged which explains what turned the sheltered middle-class 20-somethings into depraved murderers.
But three of them share one peculiar quality: they were all believed to be missing between three and six months before they apparently reappeared at the site of the terror attack last Friday.
Among the three terrorists who have been identified, one is Rohan Ibne Imtiaz, the son of a member of the ruling Awami League.
Rohan Ibne Imtiaz
Rohan has been recognised as the son of S.M. Imtiaz Khan Babul, a leader of the party's Dhaka City chapter and Bangladesh Olympic Association's deputy secretary general.
Babul lodged a police complaint on January 4 this year stating that his son was missing.
"We have identified him (Rohan) as Imtiaz Babul's son after going through the pictures that came up in the media and on Facebook," Mukul Chowdhury, a vice-president of the recently defunct Awami League's Dhaka City unit committee, told bdnews24.com.
The Awami League currently rules the country and is one of the two largest political parties of Bangladesh.
Former classmates have uploaded a photo combo in the social media of Rohan with his parents and a photo -- reportedly released by the Islamic State -- that monitoring group SITE Intelligence published on Twitter as one of the Dhaka cafe attackers.
Acquaintances of the young men identified them using the photos uploaded by the ISIS and by the images of the dead bodies released by the police.
Shamim Mubashir
Shamim was missing since February 29, 2016,
According to acquaintances, this is Shamim Mubashir was an 'O' Level candidate at Sunnydale School, one of Dhaka's top school.
The general diary filed by his family at Gulshan police station said that on the afternoon of his disappearance, Sameeh got down from the car while on his way to a coaching centre, complaining that the traffic was too bad. He was not seen again until the attack, Dhaka Tribune reports.
Nibras Islam
Missing since January 2016, went to another elite Dhaka School, called Turkish Hopes.
On Facebook, those who knew them expressed shock that these young men, who lived seemingly normal lives, had transformed into cold blooded killing machines.
One acquaintance told the Dhaka Tribune that Nibras was a social person and a good football player. This source had played a match with Nibras at the Turkish Hope School grounds late last year.
