Lt Col (retd) AKM Sufiul Anam, a Bangladeshi citizen and UN official, has been rescued from hostage of militant outfit al-Qaeda.

The rescue has taken place following direct supervision of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said sources on Tuesday. 

AKM Sufiul Anam was  among the five United Nations staffs abducted in southern Yemen in February 2022.

According to sources, the rescue operation of the Bangladeshi UN worker was conducted under the direct guidance of the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

The Bangladesh government in January this year sent an army-led five-member delegation to the Middle Eastern country and its neighbours in an attempt to get him released. Colonel Kazi Mohammad Zakaria led the delegation.

In mid-June, a video of a kidnapped Bangladeshi UN official was released. al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released video of AKM Sufiul Anam, who was kidnapped from war-torn Yemen, the SITE Intelligence Group said.

Wearing a blue shirt and glass, Anam was seen reading from a prepared statement. Identified by the SITE monitoring service as Bangladeshi, he said his sick colleagues needed urgent hospital treatment.

There was no way of knowing who prepared the statement, which appeared to have been recorded on June 3. A previous recording of Anam was released by his captors last September.

Earlier, in last September Anam pleaded with the UN and international community to free him from captivity.
In a video message, he expressed fear of being killed if the demands of his captors are not met.

SITE Intelligence Group, an American consultancy group that tracks online activity of terrorist organisation around the world, brought the video to the fore.

Anam alleged that al-Qaeda militants abducted him. He said the video was recorded on August 9 and other colleagues are also held captive along with him.

Anam was chief field security coordination officer of the safety and security department of the UN posted in Aden.

Retired military official Sufiul Anam was abducted along with several Yemeni colleagues and, six months later, a video surfaced showing him calling for his rescue from the hands of al-Qaeda.

al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch released the video showing the Bangladeshi UN official, the SITE Intelligence Group reported.

Sufiul, who was a 4th Bangladesh Military Academy batch officer, went on retirement in 2005. Later, he took up job of a security officer at the UN.

In February 2022, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) kidnapped Anam and four others as they returned to the port city of Aden after a field mission.

Source Daily Sun

BDST: 2130 HRS, AUGUST 08, 2023
MSK