Detectives yesterday arrested a youth, who allegedly issued a threat on August 20 to blow up the Embassy of Egypt in Dhaka, impersonating himself as a member of the “Muslim Brotherhood”, and a supporter of Mohammed Morsi, the recently ousted President of the Egypt.
Following the threat, the embassy closed its visa issuing centre for 11 days from Tuesday.
The embassy authorities on Tuesday received the hand-written letter containing the threat to blow up the embassy like in Libya. Muslim Brotherhood is a political front that backs Egypt’s ousted President Mohammed Morsi.
Identified as Shawkat Afsar alias Hiron, the 18-year-old youth was arrested at 12pm from “Focus” coaching centre run by the Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS), students’ wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, located at the capital’s Farmgate.
Hailing from Jalalabad in Cox’sbazar, Shawkat has passed HSC this year and had been taking part at the coaching centre as part of his preparation to get admitted to a university.
“During primary interrogation the detained youth admitted his involvement in issuance of the threat. He also admitted that he himself wrote the letter with his own hand and dropped it in the letter box of the Egypt embassy located at Gulshan-2 on Tuesday,” said Md Monirul Islam, Joint Commissioner of Detective Branch (DB) of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP).
The Joint Commissioner said, in the letter the detained youth used his identity as Shawkat Osman instead of his real name Shawkat Afsar but mentioned his own cell phone number.
The senior DB official claimed that they have found proof that the letter was written by Shawkat as they had verified the writings in the letter as Shawkat’s.
“Although it seemed to be a foolish act of mentioning one’s name, but we are yet in a mystery about why mentioned his cell phone number,” said the DB official.
He said, “In the letter, Shawkat also identified him as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a supporter of Morsi. Besides, he said, unless the “torture” on the supporters of Morsi and the people of Egypt is not stopped, the embassy of Egypt in Dhaka would face the same fate of that in Libya.”
Joint Commissioner Monirul said to have information that the detained youth is a Shibir activist and he had been inspired to issue the threat through Facebook, as he (the detainee) is also engaged in groups campaigning in favour of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
When asked, the DB official said they were verifying whether the youth have the capacity to blow up the embassy as mentioned in his letter or has links to any terrorist network.
DB officials also said they were notified about the threat by the Foreign Ministry, and would inform the Egypt embassy authorities about the arrest. “There is nothing to be worried about the threat”, he added.
Earlier, soon after the letter was received, security around the Egyptian embassy to Dhaka was beefed up with the deployment of a huge contingent of forces from the Rab, police and other agencies.
