14 charged with Hotel Olio blast

Police have pressed formal charges against 14 militant suspects in connection with a suicide bomb blast in a hotel in Dhaka’s Panthapath two years ago in what is said to be a foiled plot to attack National Mourning Day programmes.

Dhaka’s Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Devdas Chandra Adhikary on Monday directed the government to send the files on the case to a special tribunal after accepting the charges filed by the police’s Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit, according to Raju Ahmed, investigation officer of the case.

The 14 people charged over their suspected links to the man who blew himself up in Hotel Olio are: Akram Hossain alias Niloy, his mother Sadia Hossain Lucky, father Abu Turab Khan, sister Tazreen Khanam Shubho, Tanvir Yasin Kabir, Tanvir’s wife Homayra Zakir Nabila, Abdullah Aychan Kobiraj, Abul Kashem Fakir, Lulu Sarder alias Shahid Mistri, Tajul Islam Chhoton, Nazmul Hasan Mamun, Nobo Muslim Abdullah, Kamrul Islam Shakil and Tarek Mohammad Adnan.

Police raided the hotel on the night of Aug 14 in 2017 and later the CTTC and SWAT joined forces with them on the morning of Aug 15.

At one point, a suspected militant, later identified as Saiful Islam, blew himself up. The explosion caused a portion of the building’s fourth-floor wall and grill to collapse onto the street below.

Saiful was a member of the revived faction of banned terrorist outfit Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh or Neo-JMB, police said.

Law-enforcement later identified the 14 suspects, all of whom are said to be members of Neo-JMB, in August this year.

All of them are behind bars and 10 have confessed to taking part in the plot in statements given to the court, according to the counter-terrorism police unit.