A Bangladesh court has sentenced two students to death for the murder of a secular blogger, delivering the first convictions after a series of such killings.
Ahmed Rajib Haider, 35, was hacked to death by machete-wielding attackers in February 2013, in the first of a string of killings targeting secular writers.
The judge in the fast-track court found both students and another man, Maksudul Hasan, guilty of murder and convicted another five people on lesser charges related to Haider’s death.
Hasan, 23, was handed a life sentence. One of the two students, who attended one of the country’s top universities, is on the run and was sentenced in absentia.
“Two students of North South University, Faisal bin Nayem and Rezwanul Azad Rana, were sentenced to death. Rana has been a fugitive since the trial began,” Mahbubur Rahman, prosecuting, said.
Rahman said the students had been inspired by the sermons of firebrand cleric Jashim Uddin Rahmani, who was given five years in prison for abetting the murder. “I am not satisfied. The judge said it was a pre-planned murder. They should have been given harsher punishments,” Rahman said.
Five more secular bloggers and a publisher have been killed this year, triggering protests and claims that the government is not doing enough to protect dissident writers and activists. Police say the banned Islamist group Ansarullah Bangla Team is behind the attacks.
Haider, an architect, became a target of the group after he helped launch a mass protest against the leaders of the largest Islamist party, several of whom are accused of war crimes during Bangladesh’s 1971 independence struggle against Pakistan.
Police said Haider, better known by his Bengali online identity Thaba Baba, also wrote against Islam and mocked the prophet Muhammad on blog sites.
Rahmani, a firebrand cleric who led a mosque in the Dhaka’s Mohammadpur neighbourhood, had preached that it was legal to kill atheist bloggers who campaigned against Islam, the police added.