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Mourners carry the body of Xulhaz Mannan for his funeral in Dhaka on April 26, 2016. Photo: AP

Bangladesh charges extremists over murders of gay activists

  • Xulhaz Mannan, publisher of the country’s first LGBT magazine, and fellow activist Mahbub Tonoy were hacked to death in a Dhaka flat in April 2016
Bangladesh
Eight Islamist extremists from a banned group were charged by Bangladesh police on Sunday for the murders of two prominent gay rights activists in 2016.

Dhaka police’s counterterrorism unit filed the charges against the eight men, saying they were members of Ansar al Islam, according to deputy commissioner of police Mohibul Islam Khan.

“Among them four have been arrested and the rest are still at large,” he said, adding the extremist group was led by Syed Ziaul Haque, a sacked Bangladesh army major.

Xulhaz Mannan, publisher of Bangladesh’s first magazine for the gay and lesbian community, and fellow activist Mahbub Tonoy were hacked to death in a Dhaka flat in April 2016 by unidentified men carrying machetes and guns.

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Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent said it was behind the killings of the men, both aged 35, who it said had worked to “promote homosexuality” in Bangladesh.

But Bangladesh police chiefs have said the murders bear the hallmarks of local Islamists, denying that international jihadist networks have a presence in the world’s third largest Muslim-majority country.

Ansar al Islam – also known as Ansarullah Bangla Team – has been blamed for a series of murders since 2013, including of atheist writers, publishers, members of religious minorities, social activists and foreign aid workers.

In March last year, Zafar Iqbal - a long-standing champion of free speech and secularism in the country - was repeatedly stabbed in the head by a man linked to the group who targeted him as “an enemy of Islam”, according to investigators.

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Suspected Islamist radicals have killed around a dozen such writers and bloggers, including an American atheist blogger of Bangladeshi origin.

Washington has condemned the killings of Tonoy and Mannan, who worked for US government aid organisation USAID. Both men had received threats from Islamists over their championing of gay rights.

Bangladesh launched a crackdown on Islamist extremism after attacks in July 2016, when Islamic State-inspired militants stormed a cafe in Dhaka killing 22 people, including 18 foreigners.

Since the attacks in 2016, security forces have staged nationwide raids in which, they say, nearly 100 members of two extremist Islamist groups have been killed. Hundreds of suspects have been detained.

The South Asian nation has also boosted security since the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, which killed 258 and were carried out by jihadists affiliated to IS.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Extreme Islamists charged over gay activist murders
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