Hasnat Karim walks out of jail as police drop terror charges

Former North South University teacher Hasnat Rezaul Karim has walked out of jail following his acquittal in the Gulshan cafe attack case nearly two years after arrest.

The authorities at Kashimpur jail in Gazipur released him on Thursday afternoon after court documents reached the priso on Wednesday night, Jailer Bikash Raihan told bdnews24.com.

Hasnat started for home in Dhaka with his family on a Jeep after the release but did not speak to the media.

On Wednesday, an antiterrorism tribunal in Dhaka issued arrest warrants for two fugitives after accepting the charges in the Gulshan cafe attack case, but ordered that Hasnat be freed from the jail.

British-Bangladeshi Hasnat and his family, who went to the Holey Artisan Cafe and Bakery that day, were among the several other diners released by the terrorists in the early morning of Jul 2 before the army stormed it.

Hasnat, though apparently a hostage during the attack, had been kept under close watch since the day.

Police detained him in August the same year under Section 54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which allows making arrest without a warrant.

One of the five attackers killed in the raid to free the hostages was also found to be a student of North South University.

Eight other suspects were killed extrajudicially in operations by security forces later while eight were charged in court in July, but police dropped Hasnat’s name as a suspect.

“None of those arrested alive named Hasnat Karim. His involvement was not found during any stage of investigations. That’s why we have not included his name in the charge sheet,” Monirul Islam, chief of police’s Counterterrorism and Transnational Crimes Unit, had said after filing the charge sheet.

Hasnat had tried to secure bail several times but failed as the court agreed with state lawyers that he might be named in the charge sheet.

After his detention, Abdul Baten, who was a joint commissioner of the Detective Branch, said the former university teacher was shown arrested in the cafe attack case because specific evidence of his involvement in the attack was found.

Hasnat’s wife had denied the allegation, saying they had to act on orders from the militants.

Twenty diners, including 17 foreigners, and two police officers were killed in the attack, for which the law enforcers blamed the revived faction of home-grown militant group Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh or Neo-JMB.

A Bangladeshi student of a Canadian university, Tahmid Hasib Khan, was also seen carrying a gun along with one of the attackers.

Tahmid was also detained but later released.