Attacks by Islamic extremists in Bangladesh

Background

In 2010 the government of Bangladesh, headed by the secularist Awami League, established a war crimes tribunal to investigate war crimes perpetrated during Bangladesh's bloody 1971 War of Independence from Pakistan. In February 2013 Abdul Quader Molla, a leader of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party (a small Islamist party within the opposition coalition), was sentenced to life imprisonment by the tribunal. The sentence was condemned by Bangladesh's secularist bloggers and writers, who helped organize the 2013 Shahbag protests in response, calling for the death penalty for Molla. The protestors quickly expanded their demands to include outlawing the Jamaat-e-Islami party itself for its role in the 1971 war.

Shortly after the first Shahbag protests, counter-demonstrations, which quickly degenerated into violence, were organized by Islamist groups. Islamist leaders denounced the war crimes tribunal as political and called for an end to the prosecution of Jamaat-e-Islami leaders; they demanded instead the death penalty for secularist bloggers, denouncing them as "atheists" and accusing them of blasphemy. A spokesman for the secularist bloggers, Imran Sarker, stated that the hostility directed toward them by Islamists is due primarily to the bloggers' growing political influence in Bangladesh, which represents a major obstacle to the Islamist goal of a religious state.

Though there were occasional attacks on secularists prior to the 2013 Shahbag protests, the frequency of attacks has increased since. Reporters Without Borders noted that in 2014 a group calling itself "Defenders of Islam" published a "hit list" of 84 Bangladeshis, mostly secularists, of whom nine have already reportedly been killed and others attacked. Responsibility for many of the attacks has been claimed by Ansarullah Bangla Team, a group that, according to police, has links with both the youth wing of Jamaat-e-Islami and al-Qaeda. The group has since been banned by the government. Other attacks appear to have been perpetrated by more obscure groups.

Government and international response

While police have arrested a number of suspects in the killings, and some bloggers have received police protection, the Bangladesh government has also responded by arresting and jailing a number of secularist bloggers for "defaming Islam" and by shutting down several websites. According to Sarker, "[T]he government has taken this easy route to appease a handful of mullahs whose support they need to win the upcoming election."

A number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Reporters without Borders, PEN International, PEN Canada and the Committee to Protect Journalists have criticized the government for failing to protect its citizens and for not condemning the attacks, and have condemned the imprisonment of bloggers as an attack on free speech, which they say is contributing to a climate of fear for Bangladeshi journalists.

In a petition published in The Guardian on 22 May 2015, 150 authors, including Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and Yann Martell, called on the government of Bangladesh to put an end to the deadly attacks on bloggers, urging the Prime Minister and government "to do all in their power to ensure that the tragic events of the last three months are not repeated, and to bring the perpetrators to justice."

On 7 June 2016 Bangladeshi Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan alleged that the main opposition party BNP has links to the attacks, and that these attacks are part of a wider conspiracy that also involved Mossad, the national intelligence agency of Israel. An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman in Jerusalem later rejected the allegation in a statement and termed the accusation of the Bangladeshi Home Minister as "utter drivel".

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, expressed concern on behalf of the United Nations on 13 June 2016 by saying, "I am very concerned about the dramatic increase in number [sic] of brutal murders in Bangladesh that target freethinkers, liberals, religious minorities and LGBT activists."

On 14 June 2016 approximately 100,000 Bangladeshi Muslim clerics released a fatwa, ruling that the murder of "non-Muslims, minorities and secular activists…forbidden in Islam".

Asif Mohiuddin

On 15 January 2013 Asif Mohiuddin, a self-described "militant atheist" blogger, was stabbed near his office in Motijheel, Dhaka. He survived the attack. Mohiuddin, a winner of the BOBs award for online activism, was on an Islamist hit list that also included the sociology professor Shafiul Islam. The Islamist fundamentalist group Ansarullah Bangla Team claimed responsibility for the attack. According to Mohiuddin, he later met his attackers in jail, and they told him, "You left Islam, you are not a Muslim, you criticized the Koran, we had to do this." Reporters Without Borders stated that Mohiuddin and others have "clearly" been targeted for their "opposition to religious extremism".

Ahmed Rajib Haider

On the night of 15 February 2013, Ahmed Rajib Haider, an atheist blogger, was attacked while leaving his house in the Mirpur neighborhood of Dhaka. His body was found lying in a pool of blood, mutilated to the point that his friends could not recognise him. The following day, his coffin was carried through Shahbagh Square in a public protest attended by more than 100,000 people.

Haider was an organizer of the Shahbag movement, a group "which seeks death for war criminals and a ban on Jamaat-e-Islami and its student front Islami Chhatra Shibir." According to Haider's family, Haider was murdered "for the blogs he used to write to bring 'war criminals' to justice" and for his outspoken criticism of the Jamaat-e-Islami party. The Shahbag movement described Haider as their "first martyr".

Sunnyur Rahaman

On the night of 7 March 2013 Sunnyur Rahaman was injured when two men swooped in on him and hacked him with machetes. He came under attack around 9:00 p.m. near the Purabi Cinema Hall in Mirpur, Dhaka. With the assistance of local police, he was rushed to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital with wounds to his head, neck, right leg, and left hand. Rahaman was a Shahbag movement activist and a critic of various religious parties, including Jamaat-e-Islami.

Shafiul Islam

On 15 November 2014 a teacher in the Rajshahi University sociology department named Shafiul Islam, a follower of the Baul community, was struck with sharp weapons by several youths on his way home in Rajshahi city. He died after being taken to Rajshahi Medical College and Hospital. A fundamentalist Islamist militant group named 'Ansar al Islam Bangladesh-2' claimed responsibility for the attack. On a social media website, the group declared: "Our Mujahideens [fighters] executed a 'Murtad' [apostate] today in Rajshahi who had prohibited female students in his department to wear 'Burka' [veil]." The website also quoted a 2010 article from a newspaper affiliated with Jamaat-e-Islami stating that "Professor Shafiul Islam, while being the chair of the sociology department, recruited teachers on condition of being clean-shaved and not wearing kurta-pajamas. He barred female students from wearing burka in classes. This led to many students abandoning burka against their will."

According to one of Shafiul Islam's colleagues, the victim was not anti-Islam but had prohibited female students from wearing full-face veils in his classes as he believed they could be used to cheat in exams.

Avijit Roy

On 26 February 2015 bio-engineer Dr. Avijit Roy, a well-known Bangladeshi blogger, and his wife Bonya Ahmed were attacked in Dhaka by machete-wielding assailants. Roy and his wife had been returning home from the Ekushey Book Fair by bicycle rickshaw when around 8:30 p.m. they were attacked near the Teacher Student Center intersection of Dhaka University by unidentified assailants. According to witnesses, two assailants stopped and dragged them from the rickshaw to the pavement before striking them with machetes. Roy was struck and stabbed in the head with sharp weapons. His wife was slashed on her shoulders and the fingers of her left hand severed when she attempted to go to her husband's aid. Both were rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital, where Roy died at 10:30 p.m. His wife survived the attack.

Roy was a naturalized U.S. citizen and founder of the influential Bangladeshi blog Mukto-Mona ("Freethinkers"). A champion of liberal secularism and humanism, Roy was an outspoken atheist and opponent of religious extremism. He was the author of ten books, the best known of which was a critique of religious extremism, Virus of Faith. A group calling itself Ansar Bangla 7 claimed responsibility for the attack, describing Roy's writings as a "crime against Islam". They also stated that he was targeted as a U.S. citizen in retaliation for U.S. bombing of ISIS militants in Syria.

Roy's killing sparked protests in Dhaka and brought forth expressions of concern internationally. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice, and for the government to defend freedom of expression and public debate. Author Tahmima Anam wrote in The New York Times: "Blogging has become a dangerous profession in Bangladesh", stating that writers have rallied at Dhaka University to criticise the authorities for "not doing enough to safeguard freedom of expression". Anam wrote

[Avijit Roy] and Mr. Rahman were the victims of murderous thugs, but they were also the victims of a poisonous political climate, in which secularists and Islamists, observant Muslims and atheists, Jamaat-e-Islami and the Awami League are pitted against one another. They battle for votes, for power, for the ideological upper hand. There seems to be no common ground.

Mahfuz Anam, editor of The Daily Star, wrote that the death "is a spine-chilling warning to us all that we all can be targets. All that needs to happen for any of us to be killed is that some fanatic somewhere in the country, decides that someone or anyone, needs to be killed." Anam stated:

We believe that diversity, tolerance and freedom of conscience – fundamental to our existence – are being challenged here... What is being destroyed is an integral part of the values of our freedom struggle and the democratic struggle that we have waged so far.

Oyasiqur Rhaman

On 30 March 2015 another blogger, Oyasiqur Rhaman, was killed in the Tejgaon neighborhood of Dhaka in an attack similar to that perpetrated on Avijit Roy. The police arrested two suspects near the scene and recovered meat cleavers from them. The suspects said they killed Rhaman because of his anti-Islamic articles. Rhaman was reportedly known for criticizing "irrational religious beliefs". The suspects informed the police that they are also members of the Ansarullah Bangla Team and had trained for fifteen days before killing the blogger.

Imran Sarker told reporters that, unlike Roy, Oyasiqur Rhaman was not a high-profile blogger, but "was targeted because open-minded and progressive bloggers are being targeted in general. They are killing those who are easy to access, when they get the opportunity... The main attempt is to create fear among bloggers." According to Sarker, Rhaman's murder was part of a "struggle between those who are promoting political Islam to turn Bangladesh into a fundamentalist, religious state and the secular political forces ... That is why [the bloggers] have become the main target, and the political parties who are supposed to prevent such attacks and provide security to them seem unable to do so. The main problem is that even mainstream political parties prefer to compromise with these radical groups to remain in power".

The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a press release stating that Rhaman's death occurred in a climate of "official harassment of journalists in Bangladesh".

Ananta Bijoy Das

Ananta Bijoy Das, an atheist blogger who was on an extremist hit-list for his writing, was hacked to death by four masked men in Sylhet on 12 May 2015. Ananta wrote blogs for [Mukto-Mona. He had authored three books on science, evolution, and revolution in the Soviet Union, and headed the Sylhet-based science and rationalist council. He was also an editor of a quarterly magazine called Jukti (Logic).

Ananta Das was invited by the Swedish PEN to discuss the persecution of writers in Bangladesh, but the Swedish government refused him a visa on the grounds that he might not return to Bangladesh after his visit.

Lawyer Sara Hossain said of Roy and Das, "They've always believed and written very vocally in support of free expression and they've very explicitly written about not following any religion themselves." Asia director of Human Rights Watch Brad Adams said of Ananta's killing, "This pattern of vicious attacks on secular and atheist writers not only silences the victims but also sends a chilling message to all in Bangladesh who espouse independent views on religious issues."

An editorial in The Guardian stated: "Like Raif Badawi, imprisoned and flogged in Saudi Arabia, the brave men who have been murdered are guilty of nothing more than honesty and integrity. Those are virtues that fundamentalists and fanatics cannot stand." The editorial concluded, "Violent jihadis have circulated a list with more than 80 names of free thinkers whom they wish to kill. The public murder of awkward intellectuals is one definition of barbarism. Governments of the west, and that of Bangladesh, must do much more to defend freedom and to protect lives."

Niloy Chatterjee

Niladri Chattopadhyay Niloy, also known as Niloy Chatterjee and by his pen name Niloy Neel, was killed on 7 August 2015. It is reported that a gang of about six men armed with machetes attacked him at his home in the Goran neighborhood of Dhaka and hacked him to death. Police said that the men had tricked his wife into allowing them into their home before killing him. Neel had previously reported to the police that he feared for his life, but no action had been taken. He was an organiser of the Science and Rationalist Association Bangladesh, and had obtained a master's degree in Philosophy from Dhaka University in 2013. Niloy had written in Mukto-Mona, a blogging platform for secularists and freethinkers, was associated with the Shahbag Movement; he had attended the public protest demanding justice for the murdered bloggers, Ananta Bijoy Das and Avijit Roy. Ansarullah Al Islam Bangladesh, an Al Qaeda group, claimed responsibility for Niloy's killing.

The UN urged a quick and fair investigation of the murder saying, "It is vital to ensure the identification of those responsible for this and the previous horrendous crimes, as well as those who may have masterminded the attacks." Amnesty International condemned the killing and said that it was the "urgent duty (of the government) to make clear that no more attacks like this will be tolerated". Other entities condemning the killing include the German Government, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, Human Rights Watch, the Communist Party of Bangladesh, Gonojagoron Moncho, and other political parties of Bangladesh, both rightist and leftist.

Writer Taslima Nasrin criticized the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, and her government saying, "Sheikh Hasina's government is morally culpable. I am squarely blaming the state for these massacres in installment. Its indifference and so-called inability to rein in the murderous Ansarullah brigade is solely predicated on the fear of being labelled atheists."

Faisal Arefin Dipan

Faisal Arefin Dipan, aged 43, the publisher of Jagriti Prakashani, which published Avijit Roy's Biswasher Virus ( Bengali for The Virus of Faith), was hacked to death in Dhaka on 31 October 2015. Reports stated that he had been killed in his third-floor office at the Jagriti Prokashoni publishing house. The attack followed another stabbing, earlier the same day, in which publisher Ahmedur Rashid Chowdhury and two writers, Ranadeep Basu and Tareque Rahim, were stabbed in their office at another publishing house. The three men were taken to hospital, and at least one was reported to be in critical condition.

Ahmedur Rashid Chowdhury (Tutul)

Ahmedur Rashid Chowdhury Tutul, aged 43, editor and publisher of Shuddhashar In February 2015, he received a death threat, for publishing books of atheist writers and his secular view . On October 31, 2015, he was attacked by assailants with machetes. He was hospitalized in a critical condition. Ansar Al Islam (AQIS Bangladesh) claimed the responsibility.

Broader attacks

After an initial wave of attacks focused solely on secularists, most of them atheists, the targets broadened to include other activists, members of religious minority groups, and representatives of Bengali or western culture. Some of these attacks are reported to have been regretted by the murderers associated with one of the perpetrating groups, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh. They admitted that they had bungled their research, choosing victims who had not offended Islam but were simply popular figures in the community.

Kunio Hoshi

Kunio Hoshi (星邦男, Hoshi Kunio) was a 66-year-old Japanese man from Iwate Prefecture who was shot in Rangpur, Bangladesh, in October 2015. Hoshi was also known by the aliases Hita Kuchi and Golam Kibria. Hoshi first went to Bangladesh in 2011 and had visited every year since. He last arrived in June 2015, approximately four months before his death. Hoshi was shot three times in a remote rural region of Rangpur, where he had invested in a grass cultivation project and had leased land for Tk82,000. According to police sources, Hoshi was not a wealthy man and had come to Bangladesh to improve his condition, adding that the relatively low cost of living in Bangladesh and its rich soil drove him to try his luck in Bangladesh. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ISIL claimed responsibility for killing Hoshi on Twitter, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a US monitoring organization. His murderers told investigators that they had bungled their research and did not realize that Kunio had converted to Islam. The Japanese Embassy of Bangladesh argued that Hoshi should be buried in Bangladesh, with an Islamic-style ceremony. He was ultimately buried in Bangladesh.

Jogeshwar Roy

On 21 February 2016 the so-called Islamic State group has said it was behind the beheading of Jogeshwar Roy, a senior Hindu priest, and the wounding of two worshippers in the Panchagarh district of northern Bangladesh.

Rezaul Karim Siddique

On 23 April 2016 A. F. M. Rezaul Karim Siddique, a professor of English at the University of Rajshahi, was hacked to death by several unidentified assailants while waiting for a bus to the university campus in Rajshahi city. ISIL later claimed responsibility for his death.

Xulhaz Mannan and Tanay Majumder

Two days after Siddique's murder (25 April 2016), Xulhaz Mannan and his friend Tanay Majumder were stabbed to death by assailants who broke into Mannan's apartment in the Kolabagan neighborhood of Dhaka. Mannan was the editor of Bangladesh's first LGBT magazine and an employee of USAID. ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack.

Nikhil Joarder

On 30 April 2016 Nikhil Joarder, a Hindu tailor, was hacked to death by two assailants in Tangail in central Bangladesh, by several men on a motorcycle. Responsibililty for the crime was quickly claimed by the organization Islamic State through the news agency of the terrorist group.

Mohammad Shahidullah

On 7 May 2016 suspected Islamic militants hacked to death a 65-year-old minority Sufi Muslim man, Mohammad Shahidullah, at a mango grove in Mymensingh.

Maung Shue U Chak

Maung Shue U Chak, a 75-year-old Buddhist monk, was hacked to death in the Bandarban district of southeastern Bangladesh on 14 May 2016. The Islamic State is suspected to be behind the killing.,

Mir Sanaur Rahman and Saifuzzaman

Machete-wielding assailants hacked a village doctor to death and wounded a university teacher in the Kushtia district of Bangladesh on 20 May 2016. The homeopathic doctor, Mir Sanaur Rahman, 55, was killed on the spot, and his companion, identified as Saifuzzaman, 45, suffered serious wounds. Police found a bloody machete at the scene. Mir Sanaur Rahman provided free treatment to villagers, and his murderers, who belonged to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, are said to have chosen him as a target because they bungled their research when seeking possible victims.

Debesh Chandra Pramanik

On 25 May 2016 Debesh Chandra Pramanik, a 68-year-old Hindu businessman, was attacked and killed in his shoe shop at Gaibandha in Dhaka district. ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack, their second in Bangladesh in less than a week.

Ananda Gopal Ganguly

On 7 June 2016, Ananda Gopal Ganguly, a 70-year-old Hindu priest, had his throat slit by suspected Islamists in the Jhenaidaha district of the Khulna division, soon after three suspected Islamists were killed by police. He was said to have been hacked and shot at, with a cut to the throat being the death blow. Three men attacked him while he was riding on his motorcycle.

Nityaranjan Pande

On 10 June 2016 Nityaranjan Pande, a 60-year-old worker at a Hindu monastery in Pabna, was hacked to death by several people near the monastery. Islamist militants have been suspected in his death.

Ripon Chakraborty

On 15 June 2016 Ripon Chakraborty, a Hindu college teacher in the Madaripur district was attacked with machete knives at his home by three people. He survived the attack, but was seriously injured. One of the three attackers named Ghulam Faijullaha Fahim was caught while escaping and handed over to police by local people.

Shyamananda Das

On 1 July 2016 Shyamananda Das, a Hindu temple worker, was hacked to death by three suspected Islamic militants on motorcycles in the Satkhira district. Another two Hindu men, Surendra Sarkar and Tarak Saha, were reportedly injured by suspected Islamic militants in the attack although this has not been confirmed.

Mong Shwe Lung Marma

On 2 July 2016 Mong Shwe Lung Marma, a Buddhist farmer and the vice president of ward seven of the Awami league, was hacked to death and assassinated in Bandarban. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the assassination. The victim was killed near the site of a previous killing of another Buddhist.

Gulshan attack

On 1 July 2016 at around 11:30 pm local time, six militants entered and opened fire on the Holey Artisan Bakery in Gulshan, a diplomatic neighborhood of Dhaka. They also threw bombs and took several dozen hostages. A total of 28 people were killed, including 17 foreigners, two police officers, and five gunmen. One of the gunmen was captured and 13 hostages were freed by the Bangladesh Armed Forces, police, RAB, BGB, and joint forces. According to Bangladesh's Inspector General of Police, all six of the attackers were Bangladeshi citizens.

Nazimuddin Samad

Nazimuddin Samad (1988 – 6 April 2016) was a law student at Jagannath University and liberal blogger who was reoportedly killed by suspected radical Islamists in Dhaka for his promotion of secularism in Bangladesh. Unidentified assailants attacked Samad with a machete and shot him to death. However, Imran H Sarker, convener of the Gonojagaran Mancha said that the murder had been comitted in order divert attention from the rape and killing of Sohagi Jahan Tonu, a student of Comilla University.

Mahmuda Khanam Mitu

On 5 June 2016 Mahmuda Khanam Mitu, the wife of a Bangladesh police superintendent Babul Aktar, was stabbed, shot in the head, and killed by three suspected outside of her apartment at a busy road junction in Chittagong. Her six-year-old son was present with her while she was killed. Although she was not secular or atheist, but religious, initially the killing was suspected to have been done by Islamic extremists, as her husband had headed several investigations and operation raids related to the strings of killings committed by Islamic extremists in Chittagong and was awarded. The killings were however condemned by Ansar al-Islam, the suspected Bangladesh chapter of al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent. However, in 2017 Mitu's father, Md Mosharraf Hossain said that circumstantial evidence led him to believe that Babul himself had orchestrated his wife's murder. This allegations arose Babul was alleged to have an extramarital affair Bonani Binte Bonni, wife of deceased Special Branch Sub-Inspector Akram Hossain Liton.Babul hade been previously interrogated by police on several occasions. As of February 2017, police were investigating listed criminal Kamrul Islam Musa, a former informant who had served under Babul Aktar and his his accomplice Nabi.

Taslima Nasrin

In the 1990s author Taslima Nasrin achieved notoriety in Bangladesh for "her bold use of sexual imagery in her poetry, her self-declared atheism, and her iconoclastic lifestyle". In her newspaper columns and books, she criticized rising religious fundamentalism and government inaction. In early 1992 mobs began attacking book stores stocking her work. The same year she was assaulted at a book fair and her passport was confiscated. In July 1993 her novel Lajja was banned by the government for allegedly creating "misunderstanding among communities". On 23 September 1993 a fatwa was issued for her death. After international pressure, her passport was returned in April 1994, after which she traveled to France and returned via India. On 4 July 1994, an arrest warrant was issued for her under an old statute dating to the British colonial period outlawing writings "intended to outrage ... religious believers", and she went underground. After being granted bail on 3 August, Nasrin fled to Sweden, remaining in exile for some years. In 1998 she visited her critically ill mother in Bangladesh but was forced to go into hiding once again after threats and demonstrations. In 2005 she moved to India and applied for citizenship.

Shamsur Rahman

On 18 January 1999 Shamsur Rahman, a leading Bangladeshi poet, was targeted, and a failed attempt was made by Harakat-Ul-Jihad-Ul-Islami to kill him at his residence for his writings.

Humayun Azad

In 2003 Bangladeshi secular author and critic Humayun Azad wrote a book named Pak Sar Jamin Saad Baad criticising the political party, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami. Azad received numerous death threats from fundamentalist groups after its publication. On 27 February 2004, he became the victim of an assassination attempt by assailants armed with machetes near the campus of the University of Dhaka during the annual Ekushey Book Fair. A week prior to that assault, Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, a Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami leader and then member of the parliament, demanded in the parliament that Azad's political satire Pak Sar Jamin Saad Baad be banned and called for the application of the Blasphemy Act to the author.

On 12 August 2004 Azad was found dead in his apartment in Munich, Germany, where he had arrived a week earlier to conduct research on the 19th-German romantic poet Heinrich Heine. His family demanded an investigation, alleging that the extremists who had attempted the earlier assassination had a role in this death.

Suspects and arrests

On 26 April 2006 a Majlish-e-Shura member of Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh named Salahuddin was arrested by RAB from Chittagong as a suspected attacker on Humayun Azad. Salahuddin, accused in 33 cases, was given the death penalty for another murder case.

On 2 March 2013 the Bangladesh Detective Bureau arrested five members of the extremist organisation Ansarullah Bangla Team for the murder of Ahmed Rajib Haider. The five, all students of North South University, confessed to the crime in front of a magistrate.

On 2 March 2015 the RAB arrested Farabi Shafiur Rahman, a radical Islamist, as a suspected murderer of Avijit Roy. It was suspected by the police that Farabi had provided Roy's location, identity, and family photographs to various people. Farabi had threatened Roy several times through blogs and social media sites including Facebook. He said on different posts and comments that Roy would be killed upon his arrival in Dhaka.

On 14 August 2015 Bangladesh police said that they had arrested two men, suspected to be members of the Ansarullah Bangla Team, in connection with the murder of Niloy Neel.

On 18 August 2015 three members of Ansarullah Bangla Team, including a British citizen named Touhidur Rahman who police described as "the main planner of the attacks on Avijit Roy and Ananta Bijoy Das", had been arrested in connection with the two murders.

Death sentences in the Ahmed Rajib Haider case

Ahmed Rajib Haider's murder case was handled by a "fast-track trial court". On 30 December 2015, just under three years later, two members of Ansarullah Bangla Team – Md Faisal Bin Nayem and Redwanul Azad Rana – were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death for Rajib Haider's murder. Faisal, the court said, was the one who attacked Haider with a meat cleaver. Rana absconded and was sentenced in absentia. Another member of the outlawed group, Maksudul Hasan, was also guilty of murder and given a life sentence. Five other members of ABT, including firebrand leader Mufti Jasim Uddin Rahmani, received jail terms of five to ten years. One person was given a term of three years.