Courtesy The Daily Mirror

The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) has commenced questioning close contacts of the Sri Lankan who carried out the attack at a supermarket in Auckland, New Zealand, police said.

Authorities revealed that the suspect, Ahmed Adil Mohamed Samsudeen, also known as Ahmed Adil Mohamed Samsudeen, a resident of Kaththankudy.

It was reported that Mohamed Samsudeen is the youngest in a family of four with two brothers and a sister.

His two brothers are reportedly residing in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

According to the intelligence information about the suspect, he had studied in Colombo and had left for New Zealand in 2011 as a student.

Meanwhile the New Zealand media reported that more details about Samsudeen’s case, including his name and immigration status in New Zealand came to light on Saturday night.

Samsudeen, a Sri Lankan Muslim was granted refugee status in 2013 on the grounds that he and his father had experienced serious problems with the Sri Lankan authorities due to their political background,” according to court documents.

He said that he had been attacked, kidnapped and tortured” and that he feared that deportation to Sri Lanka would put him in increased danger.

Four years later, in 2017, Samsudeen was arrested at the airport in Auckland on suspicion of planning to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State militant group, which then controlled parts of Syria and Iraq. He subsequently spent three years in prison on a variety of charges, including assaulting a corrections officer, before being released in July.(Darshana Sanjeewa Balasuriya)