A Dhaka court has granted police two more days to grill Saudi -born Bangladeshi Motaj Abdul Majid Kafiluddin Bepari, who the counter-terror officers say had gone to Syria to fight for the Islamic State before entering Bangladesh in February this year.

Deputy Commissioner Mohibul Islam Khan of the Dhaka metro police’s Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit said that Motaj was produced in court Saturday (May 11) after a four-day remand.

Investigators pleaded for further seven days custody of the suspect, but the court granted two days.

“Motaj was on a four-day remand. However, he did not provide information about his cohorts in Bangladesh,” said the senior CTTC officer.

Counter-terror police arrested Motaj from Dhaka’s Uttara on May 5 during what investigators said a meeting with activists of neo-JMB, the splinter group of Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, which the police blame for the 2016 café attack in Dhaka.

Police, however, did not clarify whether any other arrests were made during the raid.

He has been booked under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

According to the first information report (FIR) by police, Motaj and five to six unidentified people were “planning sabotage with different militant organisations to establish Khalifah (caliphate) by toppling the government.”

Police said it seized a Bangladeshi passport, a Saudi Arabian ID card, Saudi driving licence, mobile phone, and jihadist literatures from his possession.

Born to a Bangladeshi father and a Pakistani mother, the 33-year-old was brought up in Saudi Arabia and can only speak English and Arabic, according to counter terror officers.

“He obtained a Bangladeshi passport in 2014 from the embassy in Riyadh, which he used to travel to Turkey in 2016 but failed to enter Syria from there. In 2017, he took a second attempt to enter Syria via Egypt and Turkey from Saudi Arabia and failed again. Finally in May 2018, he entered Syria and fought for the Islamic State,” an official familiar with the investigation had told Bangla Tribune on condition of anonymity.

When the Islamic State’s so-called ‘caliphate’ started to collapse late last year, he fled to Turkey and tried to go to Europe via Greece. After Turkish authorities stepped up efforts to hunt down IS foreign fighters, he came to Bangladesh on Feb 1, according to the counter-terror officer.