Snatching of 2 convicts: Militant’s wife helped plan the escape

Fatima Tasnim Shikha played a vital role in the whisking away of two militant convicts, including her husband Abu Siddiq Sohel, from the premises of a Dhaka court on November 20 last year, the Counter Terrorism and Transitional Crime unit has claimed.

A Dhaka court placed her on a five-day remand yesterday.

Earlier on Friday, a CTTC team arrested her from Narayanganj's Signboard area. A female associate, who had been sheltering her there, was also detained.

Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Mohammad Sheikh Sadi passed the remand order after Mohammad Abul Kalam Azad, a CTTC inspector and also the investigating officer of the case, produced the two before the court  with a 10-day remand prayer.

In the prayer, the IO said both were directly involved in the snatching of the two militants. They need to be remanded to know the whereabouts of the fugitives.

No lawyers stood at the court to defend them.

Speaking at a press conference on Shikha's arrest yesterday, CTTC Chief Md Asaduzzaman said Shikha would often visit her husband in jail and would communicate with him through signs. 

He said Sohel and Moinul Hasan Shamim, the other snatched militant, are holed up somewhere inside the country. Both were sentenced to death for killing publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan in 2015.

According to the information gathered during Shikha's interrogation, after Sohel escaped, he on on many occasions visited the house from where she was arrested, he told The Daily Star.

Asked if the snatching incident was an intelligence failure, the CTTC chief said it was not possible for the police to know everything.

"The militants did it [planned the snatching] very secretly. When the husband and wife met in jail, they discussed the plan using signs. They were able to do it while avoiding the attention of those of us who keep an eye on them."

On November 20, Shikha was on the premises of Dhaka Chief Judicial Magistrate's Court, and after the two militants were snatched from police custody, she took them to an Ansar camp, Asaduzzaman said.

"The militants made off on two separate motorcycles. It was monitored by Shikha and the outfit's military wing chief Ayman. Around 10 to 13 people took part in the snatching."

He added that the plan came from the top level of the banned organisation.

To execute it, members of Ansar al-Islam rented several houses in Dhaka and surrounding districts using fake NIDs.

Ayman and Shikha, who completed her BSc in engineering from the Military Institute of Science and Technology in 2014, held regular meetings with the Ansar al-Islam members, he said.

"Apart from this, we got the names of others who were part of the plan. But for the sake of investigation, we are not revealing those."

He said Shikha was introduced to the ideology of Ansar al-Islam by her brother Mozzammel Hossain alias Saimon.

After marrying Sohel, whom she came to know through Saimon, she became a crucial member of the banned outfit.