Family says youth detained in bloodied state after terror attack is a staff of Holey Artisan Bakery

The family of an injured youth detained by police from near the Holey Artisan Bakery hours after the militants stormed it on Friday night has claimed that he is a staffer of the cafe.

Another employee of the cafe has also identified the youth as Jakir Hossain Shaon, 22, an assistant to the chef of the establishment.
 
Shaon, covered in blood, was detained from the area behind the cafe around Friday midnight.
 
His mother Masuda Begum had been looking for him for the past two days before she found him at Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) on Monday afternoon - in a terrible shape and receiving treatment.
 
She alleged that Shaon had been tortured in police custody.
 
“I didn’t know whether my son is alive. But now, I have no idea whether he is going to live. His face is unrecognisable from the merciless beating (by policemen). His hands and legs have swollen.
 
“Why did they do this to my innocent son? There isn’t a single area on his body where they didn’t hit him,” Masuda told bdnews24.com.
 

Jakir Hossain Shaon

She also alleged that the hospital authorities were not telling her when Shaon had been taken there. But the DMCH registrar says he was admitted around Sunday midnight.

DMCH Police Outpost’s SI Bachchu Mia declined comment on Shaon issue.

But another officer of the outpost, asking not to be named, said a handcuffed Shaon was being treated at the hospital’s casualty ward.

On Friday night, Holey Artisan Bakery and O’ Kitchen Restaurant came under attack by gunmen who shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’. They had taken at least 33 hostages and killed two police officers, who had tried to end the siege.
 
Army commandos stormed the eatery, which was popular among foreigners in Gulshan-2, the next morning and rescued 13 hostages.
 
The army said 20 hostages were found dead on the premises. They included nine from Italy, seven from Japan, an Indian citizen and three Bangladeshis, one of whom was a US citizen as well.
 
Six militants had been killed and another caught alive during the rescue operation, according to the army.
 
IGP AKM Shahidul Hoque earlier on Monday said two men were also detained for their suspected link with the militant attack, but did not disclose their identities.
 
DMP Commissioner Asaduzzaman Mia said that one of the suspected attackers was being treated at DMCH.

Shaon’s mother Masuda said her son was supposed to return home in Narayanganj’s Siddhirganj on Sunday.
 
She and her two other sons ‘Arafat’ and ‘Abdullah’ came to the street in front of Holey Artisan Bakery on Sunday afternoon after failing to reach or find him after the attack on Friday night and on Saturday.
 
As they showed Shaon’s photo to the journalists and people gathered there, a staff of the cafe, Shishir Bairagi, told them that Shaon was alive and he could be in the United Hospital.
 
But that lead led them to a dead end.
 
Masuda, her husband Abdus Sattar and their two other sons returned to Gulshan on Monday morning. They found Shaon at DMCH later in the day after getting information from a journalist.
 
She said Shaon last spoke to them over phone around 7pm on Friday. “He told me that he had received the festival allowance that day. He also said he will come home on Sunday.”
 
Since then, the family had been unable to reach him over phone, she added.
 
Shaon had been working at Holey Artisan Bakery for nearly one year.
 
Shishir Bairagi told bdnews24.com that he had no idea how the chef’s assistant, Shaon, escaped after the terrorists had laid the cafe under siege.
 
“I was hiding in a bathroom with several others. At one point in the night, the terrorists told us that they would not kill the Bangladeshis and asked us to come out of the bathroom.

“But four or five of us broke the bathroom wall and fled through the back,” Bairagi said.