AFP
Dhaka
The widow of an American atheist blogger who was murdered in Bangladesh last month accused police yesterday of standing idle while he was being hacked to death with machetes in downtown Dhaka.
In her first statement since the February 26 attack in which she herself was badly injured, Rafida Bonya Ahmed said her husband Avijit Roy was murdered because he “critiqued religious
fundamentalism”.
“As his wife, fellow writer, and a freethinker, I strongly condemn this gruesome act of terror,” she said in an emailed statement to AFP from her home in the United States.
“While Avijit and I were being ruthlessly attacked, the local police stood close by and
did not act.”
Witnesses said Roy and wife had been returning from a book fair when they were both hauled off their rickshaw on a busy street in the centre of the capital by at least two assailants who then slashed them with
machetes.
Ahmed, who lost a finger in the attack, was initially treated for her injuries in Bangladesh before being flown home to the United States.
Bangladesh-born Roy, who emigrated to the southern state of Georgia some 15 years ago, was well known in his native land for his Mukto-Mona (Free-Mind) blog where he railed against all forms of organised religion.
He was also the author of a series of books, including the best-selling “The Virus of Faith”, which was hugely contentious in Bangladesh, an officially secular state where around 90% of
people are Muslim.
In her statement, Ahmed called on the Bangladeshi government to “do everything in its power to bring the murderers to justice”.
Bangladeshi security forces last week arrested Islamic “fundamentalist blogger” Farabi Shafiur Rahman Farabi in connection with the killing. He was subsequently remanded in custody to allow further
questioning.
Detectives said they have been trying to find out if the attack was carried out by his followers or Farabi himself.
He was earlier arrested for inciting attacks on bloggers on social media after blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider was hacked to death in 2013.
Roy was the second atheist blogger to have been murdered in Bangladesh in the last two years and the fourth writer to have been attacked since 2004.
His killing was greeted with uproar both at home and abroad, with Washington condemning the “shocking act of violence” as an assault on the country’s “proud tradition” of free speech.
Cops hand over evidence to FBI
Evidence related to the murder of Bangladesh-born blogger-writer Avijit Roy has been given to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), police said yesterday.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesperson Monirul Islam said yesterday that Bangladeshi investigators handed over 12 or 13 pieces of evidence, including two machetes, a bag and blood samples to the US investigative agency, bdnews24.com reported.
Police recovered the two machetes and the bag just 50 yards away from the crime scene.
An FBI team has already inspected the spot of the crime near the Teachers and Students Centre (TSC), located in the heart of the university campus.
They have also spoken to the slain writer’s father Ajay Roy, a former physics teacher at the university.
On Tuesday, Dhaka’s chief metropolitan magistrate allowed the evidential items to be examined at the FBI’s laboratory after investigators filed a plea.
