Dentist, singer and MBA identified in IS video threatening more attacks

Dhaka, July 7  

The three Bangladeshi youths who appeared in the latest ISIS video threatening of more terror attacks around the world have been identified as a dentist, an aspiring singer and an MBA student, officials said here on Thursday.

Model Naila Nayem’s former husband Tushar is one of the three youths who appeared in a so-called Islamic State video released yesterday, days after Islamist gunmen stormed a popular restaurant in Dhaka’s diplomatic enclave late on Friday and killed 22 people, most of them foreigners from Italy, Japan, India and the US, officials said.

Late Bangladesh Army major Washikur Azad’s son Tushar (with longer beards in the video) married Nayem in 2011 but later they separated, bdnews24 reported.

A dentist by profession, Tushar was missing for around two years. He completed secondary education at Adamjee Cantonment Public School and higher secondary at RAJUK Uttara Model College. He lived in Dhaka, the report said.

The youth appearing in the video with his face covered with Arabic-styled headdress has been identified by the sources as Tawsif Hossain, a former student of the Institute of Business Administration at the Dhaka University, it said.

He was a student of the 18th batch of the institute but left the university without completing the course.

Hossain had been arrested before on charges of his involvement with Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). His family sent him to Austria later on, but his friends there said he was not there, the report said.

The other youth in the video was identified as Tahmid Rahman Shafi, one of the top 10 finalists of NTV’s reality music show in 1995, it said.

Shafi, who resigned from Grameenphone in 2011, is a son of late election commissioner Shafiur Rahman, his former colleagues and classmates in Notre Dame College have said.

He completed BBA at BRAC University and MBA at IBA, sources in the government said. They said he had once requested his father to join Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but he refused. He had then left with his wife for war-torn Syria, the report said.

All the three youths spoke in Bangla. Only Shafi translated his speech to English.

The ISIS video was released in a SITE Intelligence site on Tuesday. The message containing threats has gone viral on social media among Bangladeshis still recovering from the shock from the slaughter of 20 hostages and two police officers in Dhaka. — PTI