Bangladesh police identify suspect in failed plane hijacking Police say the man who tried to hijack a passenger plane in Bangladesh was a 24-year-old who lived near the capital

DHAKA, Bangladesh -- A man who was killed while trying to hijack a commercial flight in Bangladesh was a 24-year-old passenger from a village near the capital who had been previously arrested in a kidnapping case, officials said Monday.

Mufti Mahmud Khan, director of the law and media wing of Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion security agency, said the suspect was listed in its database as Md. Polash Ahmed, and had been arrested in 2012. Khan declined to provide details about the kidnapping case.

Confusion remained over whether Ahmed was armed.

The plane operated by Biman Bangladesh Airlines made an emergency landing in Chittagonghad something" when he boarded Sunday's flight, Ali said.

Khan said when the agency's bomb-disposal unit reached the scene, they found that Ahmed had fake "bomb-like material."

Officials said Ahmed asked to speak to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheik Hasina before dying on his way to a hospital.

A police chief in Narayanganj outside Dhaka, Mohammed Moniruzzaman, first identified the suspect as 24-year-old Mohammed Polash Ahmed.

Moniruzzaman said Ahmed's parents confirmed his identity, and that residents of the village where he lived said he had a "bad reputation."

A police official in Chittagong, Mohammed Alauddin, said by phone that no one had yet claimed Ahmed's body from the Chittagong Medical College and Hospital mortuary.

Bangladesh, a majority Muslim nation of 162 million people, has had periodic terrorist attacks in recent years, including an assault on