International News

DHAKA, (APP/AFP) – A British national and a student
at a Canadian university who were dining at a Bangladeshi cafe when
it was besieged by militants last month 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 Wednesday in connection with last month’s siege in
Dhaka when 20 hostages were murdered.
“We can confirm they were arrested under Section 54 of CrPC
(criminal procedure),” police spokesman A.K.M Shahidur Rahman told
AFP on Thursday, referring to a law under which police can detain
someone on 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 have 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 men’s families have said they were being held
by security forces even though there was no evidence to
link them to the attackers.
Police had denied the men were in their custody before
announcing the arrest on Thursday.