Dhaka attack: Attackers’ blood samples given to FBI

Bangladesh police on Friday handed over to the FBI for testing blood and hair samples of militants who carried out the country’s worst terror attack in which 22 people, mostly foreigners, were killed.

“Hair and blood samples from the five gunmen and their suspected aide have been given to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for testing,” said deputy commissioner Masudur Rahman.

Immediately after the attack on July 1, US secretary of state John Kerry called Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and offered her assistance from American law enforcement agencies, including FBI.

The counter-terror unit asked for hair and 20 millilitres of blood to be collected from the bodies for a second time, Soheil Mahmud, assistant professor of Forensics Medicine at Dhaka Medical College and Hospital said.

Doctors on Wednesday collected hair and blood samples from the bodies of six “terrorists” to ascertain whether they had been under the influence of drugs while “carrying out” the attack on a Gulshan cafe, Dhaka Tribune reported.

The autopsy will check if they were under the influence of amphetamine-based drugs, namely Captagon, that the ISIS uses to create “super soldiers”, Mr Mahmud said.

A forensic team of Dhaka Medical College Hospital collected the samples on request of Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit of the Dhaka Metropoli-tan Police. The move came amid media reports that militants, especially members of the Islamic State, are popping addictive pills, which help “fuel their fury”, before attacking the victims.

The gunmen, mostly in their 20s, seized the upscale cafe, where they shot and slaughtered 22 hostages, including an Indian.

Two police officers also died during the attack, for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility.

The government said six attackers were killed by army commandos, who stormed the cafe the next morning.

Among them, five were members of the banned Jama’aatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), according to the police. They maintained that the sixth person, the restaurant’s chef, Saiful Chowkider, “was assisting the killers”.

The remains of the attackers and their alleged aide were at the mortuary of the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in Dhaka.