Father struggles with son's fall into militancy
He has seen the body, and authorities say the fingerprints match. But Towhid Rouf is having trouble believing that this skinny, bearded man - killed with eight other suspected Islamist militants in a Bangladesh police raid - could possibly be his smart, well-behaved son.
Shazad Rouf Orko, who once lived in the United States and held an American passport, was a fun-loving student and a member of a musically inclined family who played guitar, his father said. He disappeared early this year, and before his death he reportedly left behind an audio tape in which he denounced his own family as apostates.
"My one mind says he is my son, again another says most probably not," Rouf said on Monday from Dhaka in a telephone interview. "Some features match, but I can't imagine he is my son ... (that) my son can be part of it."
