Show caption Bangladeshi police walk near a banner in support of victims of the Dhaka cafe attack. Bangladesh’s home minister said the attackers were highly educated and from wealthy families. Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images Bangladesh Bangladesh politician’s son among Dhaka cafe attack suspects Imtiaz Khan Babul says his son, Rohan Imtiaz, 22, showed no hint of radicalisation before he disappeared last December Agence France-Presse in Dhaka Tue 5 Jul 2016 09.04 EDT Share on Facebook

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A Bangladeshi politician has spoken of his horror on learning that his son was among the suspects who murdered foreigners at a Dhaka cafe last week, and said many young men from wealthy, educated families were going missing.



Imtiaz Khan Babul said his 22-year-old son Rohan Imtiaz, who was killed when commandos stormed the cafe on Saturday, had been a top-scoring student whose behaviour gave no hint he was radicalised before he disappeared last December.

“I was stunned and speechless to learn that my son had done such a heinous thing,” a tearful Babul said on Tuesday.

“I don’t know what changed him. There was nothing that would suggest that he was getting radicalised. He hardly read any religious books.”

Babul, an official with the ruling Awami League party, said he believed his son might have been “brainwashed” online.

He had not seen Rohan since travelling to India in December with his maths teacher wife, leaving their three children in Dhaka.

In the months following Rohan’s disappearance, Babul lobbied senior party officials to help find his only son and even scoured the city’s morgues. As he searched, he met other families who had suffered the same fate.

“I met so many parents whose boys had gone missing,” he said. “Even yesterday, one of them was saying that I was lucky that I got the body of my boy. Some of them are not so lucky.”

Security forces shot dead six men when they stormed the cafe, bringing the all-night siege to an end, while one suspected attacker was taken alive and is being questioned.

Police initially identified all six as suspected attackers, but on Tuesday they said they were looking into whether one was a kitchen worker who was held hostage.

Relatives of Saiful Islam Chowkider raised the alarm after recognising the 39-year-old among the pictures of the suspects police released after the siege.

“We protested. We said he was never a militant. He was hardworking man and one of the best pizza and pasta makers in Bangladesh,” Chowkider’s cousin Solaiman told AFP.

“We went to the military, but they would not hand over the body, they said he was a suspect.”

Witnesses say the perpetrators of the attack, claimed by Islamic State, spared the lives of Muslims.

