The dreaded militant who allegedly masterminded the Holey Artisan Bakery attack was remembered as a “shy, skinny kid” by an expert on international terrorism who had investigated jihadis in Ontario’s Windsor. Tamim Chowdhury’s name was catapulted to the police’s most-wanted list after the Gulshan café attack on July 1 that left 20 diners, including 17 foreigners, dead. A month later, on August 2, police announced a reward of Tk. 20 lakh for any information that could lead to the arrest of Chowdhury, the suspected mastermind. Undaunted, Chowdhury led another attack a week later, near an Eid congregation in Sholakia, which left four persons, including two policemen, dead. With Operation Hit Strong 27, Chowdhury’s brief but lethal career in militancy has come to an end.
According to police sources, Chowdhury’s family hails from Sylhet. His father Shafi Ahmed Chowdhury, who was a mariner, immigrated to Windsor in Ontario, Canada, in the early 1970s. Chowdhury, who was 30 when he was killed, was a resident of Windsor until he went missing in 2013.
As a child, he went to JL Forster Secondary School in. In 2004, he competed in a variety of track and field activities for the school. He graduated from the University of Windsor in spring 2011, with an honours degree in chemistry. Amarnath Amarasingam, a post-doctoral fellow at the Resilience Research Centre at Dalhousie University and an expert on international terrorism, first came to know about Chowdhury in 2015 when he was investigating jihadis in Windsor.
He said of Chowdhury’s time in Windsor, “There were a few (people) who knew him from the mosque and from the social circles” and “He was a shy, skinny kid.” Amarasingam had interviewed a few friends of a jihadi named Ahmad Waseem. A friend of Waseem told Amarasingam that Chowdhury, facing harassment from law enforcement agencies in Canada, had decided to move back to his ancestral home in Bangladesh. Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit chief Monirul Islam believes Chowdhury might have developed a network of financiers abroad before returning home in 2013. The 14th edition of Dabiq, an online magazine used by the IS for recruitment, featured an interview with him. Chowdhury was described as the “amir of the Khilafah’s soldiers in Bengal”.
He was quoted as saying, “Bengal is an important region for the Khilafah and the global jihad due to its strategic geographic position. Bengal is located on the eastern side of India, whereas Wilayat Khurasan is located on its western side. Thus, having a strong jihad base in Bengal will facilitate performing guerrilla attacks inside India simultaneously from both sides and facilitate creating a condition of tawahhush (fear and chaos) in India along with the help of the existing local mujahidin there.”
Inspector general of police (IG) AKM Shahidul Haque had earlier revealed that Chowdhury had held meetings with the Gulshan and Sholakia attackers. “He held meetings with militants in their hideout in Kalyanpur area to inspire them and to provide them with financial assistance to carry out the attacks,” he had said. Police say that ever since he returned from Canada three years ago, Chowdhury had led and financed efforts to radicalise young Muslims. “He came to Bangladesh after being trained in Syria. He led the Neo-JMB,” the IG had said. After knowing that the families of the Gulshan and Sholakia attackers had lodged missing person complaints, law enforcement agencies had released a list of 10 missing persons. Chowdhury’s name was on that list.
His role in fostering extremism was revealed during the interrogation of Rakibul Hasan, 25, who was arrested in a raid on a militant hideout in July in which nine extremists were killed in Dhaka.
A police report said Chowdhury and others had given Hasan and other militants “money, explosives and weapons” and “trained and advised” them.