Bangladesh police finally ID the plane ‘hijacker’

The man who was killed while trying to hijack a commercial flight in Bangladesh was identified as a 24-year-old passenger from a village near the capital who had been previously arrested in a kidnapping case, officials said Monday.

The director of the law and media wing of Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion security agency, Mufti Mahmud Khan, said the suspect was listed in its database as Md. Polash Ahmed, and had been arrested in 2012. Khan declined to provide details about the kidnapping case.

There remains confusion over whether Ahmed was armed.

The plane that was heading to Dubai via Chittagong was operated by Biman Bangladesh Airlines. After the attempted hijacking which occurred shortly after takeoff from Dhaka, it made an emergency landing in Chittagong on Sunday.

Officials said Sunday that Ahmed was injured in an exchange of gunfire with special forces, that he had shot at them first and was armed with a pistol.

Civil aviation authorities cast doubt on that account on Monday.

When asked about reports that Ahmed had a toy gun, ministry secretary Mohibul Haque said they didn’t know whether the pistol was a toy.

“We don’t know if there was any exchange of gunfire,” Haque said.

Bangladesh civil aviation minister Mahbub Ali told reporters that Ahmed had booked a seat on the flight from Dhaka to Chittagong, and that airport surveillance video showed him going through security with other passengers.

“There was no signal that he had something” when he boarded Sunday’s flight, Ali said.

Khan said when the agency’s bomb-disposal unit reached the scene, they found that Ahmed had fake “bomblike material.”

Officials said Ahmed asked to speak to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheik Hasina before dying on his way to a hospital.

A police chief in Narayanganj outside Dhaka, Mohammed Moniruzzaman, first identified the suspect as 24-year-old Mahmud Polash Ahmed.

Moniruzzaman said Ahmed’s parents confirmed his identity, and that residents of the village where he lived said he had a “bad reputation.”