Bangladesh sentences two to death for blogger killing

Death Sentence to Two Murderers of Bangladesh Blogger: On Thursday, the Bangladesh court made a decision to sentence of death to two men for assassinating the murder of secular blogger in 2013, this is the first time for anyone is punished after committing multiple killings.

Rajib Haider, an architect and blogger, was hacked to death near his house in the capital, Dhaka, in February 2013, having led a popular movement demanding the death penalty for Islamist leaders accused of atrocities in Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence. A further five, including Mufti Jashimuddin Rahmani, a senior figure in the Ansarullah Bangla militant group, were given prison sentences.

Haider’s father rejected the verdicts, saying all the defendants deserved the death sentence.

Since Rajib’s assassination, Bangladesh witnessed five more murders of secular writers including a progressive publisher, all in the past one year.

Police said Haider also wrote anti-Islam blogs and mocked Prophet Muhammad. Another was tried in absentia.

They said Rahmani, a firebrand cleric who headed a mosque in the Dhaka’s Mohammadpur neighbourhood, had preached that it was legal to kill atheist bloggers who campaigned against Islam.

Nijjam Uddin said AFP, “I am not happy”.

Defence lawyer Mosharraf Hossain Kajal said that they would go to the higher court to challenge the sentence. Many bloggers have gone into hiding, and some have left the country, as concerns have grown about an increasingly bloody divide between secular activists and conservative groups. On February 26 this year, Bangladesh-born USA blogger and science writer Avijit Roy, 42, was attacked just yards away from a book fair in Dhaka while he died instantly.