Prof Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, hacked to death in Rajshahi in attack similar to murders of other secular and atheist activists

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for hacking to death a university professor in Bangladesh for “calling to atheism”. The claim was reported by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi websites. No further details were available.



Professor Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, was attacked from behind with machetes as he walked from his home to a bus station in the north-western city of Rajshahi, where he taught English at the public university, police said.

“His neck was hacked at least three times and was 70%-80% severed,” said the Rajshahi police commissioner, Mohammad Shamsuddin. “By examining the nature of the attack, we suspect that it was carried out by extremist groups.”

Nahidul Islam, a deputy commissioner of police, said Siddique was involved in cultural programmes and set up a music school at Bagmara, a former bastion of an outlawed Islamist group, Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). “The attack is similar to the ones carried out on [atheist] bloggers in the recent past,” he said.

Sajidul Karim Siddique, a brother of the victim, said the academic was a “very quiet and simple man” who focused on studying and teaching. “So far as we know, he did not have any known enemies and we never found him worried,” he said. “We don’t know why it happened to him.”

Sakhawat Hossain, a friend and fellow English professor from the university, said Siddique played the tanpura, a musical instrument popular in South Asia, and wrote poems and short stories. “He used to lead a cultural group called Komol Gandhar and edit a biannual literary magazine with the same name. But he never wrote or spoke against religion in public,” he said.

Police said Siddique was the fourth professor from Rajshahi university to be murdered. In February, a court handed down life sentences to two Islamist militants for the murder of Prof Mohammad Yunus.

The killing on Saturday triggered a protest by the university’s teachers and students, who blocked a major road and demanded the immediate arrest of the killers.

Bangladeshi Islamist militants have been blamed for a number of murders of secular bloggers and online activists since 2013, most recently in the capital, Dhaka, early this month. Police said that in each of the attacks, unidentified assailants hacked the victim to death with machetes or cleavers. The killings have sparked outrage at home and abroad, with international rights groups demanding that the secular government protect freedom of speech in the Muslim-majority but secular country.

Eight members of the banned Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), including a senior cleric who is said to have founded the Islamist group, were convicted late last year for the murder of atheist blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider in February 2013.

Ansar al-Islam, a Bangladesh branch of al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent, this month claimed responsibility for the murder of 26-year-old Nazimuddin Samad, a law student who was killed on the streets of Dhaka, according to the US monitoring group SITE. Police, however, blamed the ABT for the murder.

Authorities have consistently denied that international Islamist networks, such as al-Qaida or Islamic State, which recently claimed responsibility for the murders of minorities and foreigners, are active in the country.

