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
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.
Islamic State establishes ‘province’ in India for first time after clash in Kashmir
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.
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.
Hindu tailor hacked to death in Bangladesh in attack claimed by Islamic State
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.