Bangladesh model Naila Nayem’s former husband among three youths in ‘Islamic State video’

Model Naila Nayem’s former husband ‘Tushar’ is one of the three youths who appeared in a so-called Islamic State video released after the Gulshan cafe siege, sources in the government say.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 6 July 2016, 09:43 PM
Updated : 7 July 2016, 10:17 AM

Late Bangladesh Army Major Washikur Azad’s son Tushar (with longer beards in the video) married Nayem in 2011 but later they separated.

A dentist by profession, Tushar has been missing for around two years.

He completed secondary education at Adamjee Cantonment Public School and higher secondary at RAJUK Uttara Model College.

His house is at Baridhara DOHS in Dhaka.

The youth appearing in the video with his face covered with Arabic-styled headdress has been identified by the sources as Tawsif Hossain, a former student of the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) at the Dhaka University.

He was a student of the 18th batch of the institute but left the university without completing the course.

Hossain had been arrested before on charges of his involvement with Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

His family sent him to Austria later on, but his friends there said he was not there.

Tawsif Hossain, former student of IBA.

Tahmid Rahman Shafi, former Grameenphone official and son of former election commissioner Shafiur Rahman.

The other youth in the video has been identified as Tahmid Rahman Shafi, one of the top 10 finalists of NTV’s reality music show Closeup 1 in 1995.

Shafi, who resigned from Grameenphone in 2011, is a son of late election commissioner Shafiur Rahman, his former colleagues and classmates in Notre Dame College have said. 

He completed BBA at BRAC University and MBA at IBA, sources in the government said.

They said he had once requested his father to join Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but he refused.

He had then left with his wife for war-torn Syria.

The video is claimed to be shot in al-Raqqah, the so-called capital of IS.

All the three youths spoke in Bangla. Only Shafi also translated his speech to English.

The video started with the militant group's propaganda messages, with subtitles in Bangla and Arabic, and boasted of death tolls from numerous terror attacks it has claimed.

“The jihad in Bangladesh, the one you are witnessing now, is nothing like anything you have seen before,” said the first of the three Bangla-speaking youths, who people are now saying is Shafi, in his ‘message’ for the Bangladesh government.

He then spoke in English for the ‘Christian and Jewish crusaders and their allies’ to say their leader 'Sheikh Adnani' was not joking when he asked them to wage a war.

Referring to the attack on a cafe at Gulshan in Dhaka, he said, “What you witnessed in Bangladesh yesterday was just a glimpse, this will repeat, repeat and repeat until you lose and we win ...”

At least 22 people, including 17 foreigners and two policemen, were killed in the attack.