Police say Islamist blogger Farabi Shafiur Rahman is prime suspect in death of US man Avijit Roy, hacked to death with a machete in Dhaka

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Bangladeshi authorities have arrested a radical Islamist four days after a secular American blogger of Bangladeshi origin was hacked to death at a crowded book fair in Dhaka.

A spokesman for the police’s elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) said Farabi Shafiur Rahman had been arrested at a bus station in the capital over the brutal murder of Avijit Roy. “He is the main suspect,” RAB spokesman Maj Maksudul Alam said.

Rahman had threatened Roy several times before, including on Facebook, where he said Roy would be killed upon his arrival in Dhaka. The suspect has been handed over to the police’s detective branch, which is investigating the killing.

The RAB paraded Rahman before the press at its headquarters in Dhaka where another RAB spokesman, Mufti Mahmud, described him as a member of the banned pan-Islamist outfit Hizb ut-Tahrir.



“On different occasions, he exchanged [Roy’s] location, his identity and his family’s photographs with various people,” Mahmud told reporters.

“He wrote [on Facebook]: ‘Avijit Roy lives in America. So it’s not possible to kill him at this moment. But when he’ll return to the country, he’ll be murdered,’” Mahmud said.

Avijit Roy, the blogger who was brutally murdered in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photograph: Avijit Roy/Facebook

A source within the RAB, which is mainly responsible for tackling religious militancy within the Muslim-majority country, said correspondence between Rahman and another person about killing Roy had been discovered.

A former physics student at a top university, Rahman was detained in 2010 after he joined Hizb ut-Tahrir. He was arrested again in 2013 for making threats to a cleric for administering Islamic funeral rites to another atheist blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, after he was murdered. Farabi was later released on bail on 21 August 2013.

“Whether Farabi was involved or those who killed Roy were associated with Farabi is a matter of investigation,” Monirul Islam, joint commissioner of the detective branch of police, told the Guardian.

The Bangladeshi government on Sunday accepted an offer from the US to have the FBI help find Roy’s killers.



“I find it hopeful that the FBI has stepped into the investigation directly,” Ajoy Roy, Avijit’s father, told the Guardian. He added this would give the local investigation agencies added strength.



The atheist blogger had angered fundamentalist groups through his blogs and books, including Biswasher Virus (Virus of Faith), about science and religion.

Eleven years ago, assailants attacked Bangladeshi writer Humayun Azad, also with machetes, outside the same book fair attended by Roy. Azad survived that attack, but died in mysterious circumstances later that year in Germany, where he had gone on an academic visit. The attackers were never identified and Haider’s killers have not been caught either.



“The loopholes in the law have created a culture of impunity,” said Imran H Sarkar, a social activist. “These incidents will keep repeating unless the masterminds behind Roy’s killing are identified and brought to book.”



Avijit Roy, the blogger who wouldn't back down in the face of threats Read more

Roy, a mechanical engineer and founder of the blog Mukto-Mona (free-mind), was killed when he was returning with his wife Rafida Ahmed from the book fair held every February. The couple arrived in Dhaka on 15 February to attend the launching of Roy’s books at the fair. His wife lost a finger on her left hand, but is out of danger, said doctors. She was due to fly back to the US on Monday, said family members.

The US condemned the killing as a “shocking act of violence” and an assault on Bangladesh’s “proud tradition” of free speech.

“This was not just an attack against a person, but a cowardly assault on the universal principles enshrined in Bangladesh’s constitution,” state department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters.

Bangladeshi secular activists take part in a torch-lit protest against the killing of Avijit Roy. Photograph: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images

Free speech advocates have called on the Bangladeshi government to protect the right of writers to speak freely.

“Instead, it has adopted a policy of appeasement of ‘religious sentiment’,” wrote Salil Tripathi, for English Pen, which campaigns for the freedom of expression. “This comes alongside intimidation of the mainstream media that are critical of the government, including the leading national newspapers. The media that has supported free thought and critical thinking is under assault from a government showing increasingly authoritarian tendencies.”