Bangladesh arrests Briton over blogger murders

Authorities in Bangladesh have arrested three suspected Islamic extremists carrying out the murders of two atheist bloggers, including a British national who authorities say was the “main planner” behind the attacks.

Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) spokesmen said they arrested Touhidur Rahman, 58, and two other “active members” of an Islamic group called Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), which was banned in May over a series of killings of bloggers.

“We’ve arrested them in the capital today”, Major Maksudul Alam of the RAB said.

Das was “an atheist and wrote blogs for Mukto-Mona”, a website which used to be moderated by Avijit Roy, Imran Sarker, head of a Bangladeshi bloggers’ association, told AFP.

He said they are suspected of the killings of U.S. citizen Avijit Roy in February and Ananta Bijoy Das in May.

Assailants in February had killed 45-year-old Roy, a Bangladesh-born US national, here while his wife narrowly escaped the attack.

Secular blogger Ananta Das was killed in similar circumstances in north-eastern Bangladesh in May.

The latest killing took place last week, when 40-year-old Niloy Chakrabarti was hacked to death by a gang of attackers on Friday.

Police were also investigating claims made by a third party that Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent was behind the killings.

Militants have targeted secularist writers in Bangladesh in recent years, while the government has tried to crack down on hardline Islamist groups seeking to make the South Asian nation of 160 million people a sharia-based state.