BANGLADESH

Home minister Shahara Khatun has contradicted a statement of the Saudi government that a team from the middle-eastern country has come to Bangladesh to investigate the killing of its embassy official.

"The delegation has come to know the progress of investigation into the murder of Khalaf Al-Ali," she said on Wednesday after a meeting with the Saudi team.

Riyadh sent the eight-member team, comprising officials from Saudi home and foreign ministries, as Bangladeshi law enforcers are yet to arrest or identify anyone in the murder case though one month has passed since the incident.

An Arab News report said Bangladeshi police have failed so far to track the killers.

Saudi deputy foreign minister for protocol affairs Alauddin Alaskari told Arab News on Tuesday that the team's main objective is to identify the culprits and bring them to book.

Home secretary C Q K Mustaq Ahmed and inspector general of police Hassan Mahmood Khandker, who were present at the meeting with the Saudi team, also said it has come to know the progress of the investigation.

Quoting members of the visiting team as telling the meeting, Shahara said they have been informed about the investigation from the beginning, and expressed their satisfaction over the probe.

They are likely to meet prime minister Sheikh Hasina also, she added.

According to the schedule, the delegation will have a meeting with the investigators on Thursday.

Asked about progress in the police investigation, the minister said it is advancing 'satisfactorily'. "The investigators are working sincerely."

Unknown gunmen had shot Al-Ali, 45, an official with the consular section of the Saudi embassy in Dhaka, near his Gulshan house in the wee hours of Mar 6.

Later he died at Dhaka's United Hospital, where he had been admitted with severe bullet injuries.