AFP
Dhaka
The United States is sending a team of federal investigators to Bangladesh to help probe the murder of a visiting American blogger by suspected Islamist militants, Dhaka police said yesterday.
Avijit Roy, known for his anti-religious blog posts and books including the best-selling “The Virus of Faith”, was hacked to death with a machete as he returned home from a book fair with his wife in Dhaka last Thursday.
The family of the 43-year-old US citizen has accused Bangladeshi authorities of failing to do enough to protect him after he received death threats for his anti-religious writing.
Bangladesh’s elite security force on Monday arrested radical Islamist Farabi Shafiur Rahman, the chief suspect in the murder, who they say sent Roy several death threats.
A Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) team will arrive in Dhaka later this week, Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Monirul Islam said.
“They will mainly sit with local investigation agency,” he told reporters.
The United States has condemned Roy’s killing as a “shocking act of violence” and an assault on free speech.
A court yesterday remanded Farabi in custody for 10 days for questioning.
“He has confessed that he threatened Avijit Roy ... Intense interrogation of Farabi could lead to important clues,” Islam said.
“Initial information indicates this was done by extremist
religious group,” he added.
Roy, the founder of the Mukto-Mona (free mind) blog, was born in Bangladesh to a family of scholars but moved to Atlanta in the southern US state of Georgia around 15 years ago.
He and his blogger wife, who was also badly injured in the attack, were hauled off their rickshaw by two assailants in the attack.
The murder triggered outrage in Bangladesh, where bloggers and secular activists threatened non-stop protests until the
killers were arrested.
Police have also launched an investigation into claims that Roy’s blog was shut down just two and a half hours
before he was murdered.
“We’ve also found the Multo-Mona blog site closed. We’re trying to find out whether the BTRC (local telecoms regulator) shut it down or it was hacked by other people. It’s an important part of the investigation,” said Islam.
Police escort Farabi Shafiur Rahman, centre, as he appears in court following his arrest over the machete murder of an American blogger in Dhaka yeste
