Dhaka : A Bangladeshi politician spoke Tuesday of his horror to learn his son was among suspected gunmen who murdered foreigners at a Dhaka cafe, and said many young men from wealthy, educated families were going missing.
Imtiaz Khan Babul said his 22-year-old son Rohan Imtiaz, who was killed when commandos stormed the cafe Saturday, had been a top-scoring student whose behaviour gave no hint he was radicalised before he disappeared last December.
"I was stunned and speechless to learn that my son had done such a heinous thing," a tearful Babul told AFP.
"I don't know what changed him. There was nothing that would suggest that he was getting radicalised. He hardly read any religious books."
Babul, an official with the ruling Awami League party, said had not seen his son since travelling to India in December with his math teacher wife, leaving the couple's three children in Dhaka.
In the months that followed Rohan's disappearance, Babul lobbied senior party officials to help find his only son and even scoured the city's morgues. As he searched, he met other families who had suffered the same fate.
"I met so many parents whose boys had gone missing," he said. "Even yesterday, one of them was saying that I was lucky that I got the body of my boy. Some of them are not so lucky."
Babul said he believed his son may have been "brainwashed" on the Internet.
Bangladesh's home minister has said the men behind Friday night's attack at an upmarket cafe, which left 20 people dead, were highly educated and from wealthy families.
Witnesses say the perpetrators of the attack, which the Islamic State group has claimed, spared the lives of Muslims while herding foreigners to their deaths, killing many with machete-style weapons.
They included nine Italians, seven Japanese, a US citizen and a 19-year-old Indian student.
Six young men were shot dead at the end of the all-night siege, while one was taken alive and is being questioned.
The government has said all the attackers were members of the Jamaeytul Mujahdeen Bangladesh (JMB), a banned local Islamist group.
