to death at his home in Dhaka in the fourth such murder in
Bangladesh since the start of the year, an activist group and
police have said.
Niloy Chatterjee, who used the pen-name Niloy Neel, was
murdered on Friday after the men broke into his flat in the
capital's Goran neighbourhood, according to the Bangladesh
Blogger and Activist Network, which was alerted to the
attack by a witness
"They entered his room in the fifth floor and shoved his
friend aside and then hacked him to death. He was a listed
target of the Islamist militants," the network's head Imran H
Sarker, told the AFP news agency.
Later on Friday, Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star,
reported that Ansar al-Islam, a local chapter of al-Qaeda
had claimed responsibility for the killing . The newspaper said
the group had sent an email to media houses in Bangladesh,
adding that the authenticity of the email issued by Mufti
Abdullah Ashraf, who claimed himself to be the spokesman
of Ansar-Al-Islam, could not be verified independently.
Chatterjee, 40, was a critic of religious extremism that led to
bombings in mosques and the killing of numerous civilians,
Sarker said.
Police confirmed Chatterjee, who lived with his family, had
been murdered but had no details on his background.
In a recent Facebook post, Chatterjee said he was being
followed by two strangers. He said he had approached the
police but they had refused to register his complaint.
The United Nations special rapporteurs on freedom of
expression, David Kaye, and on extrajudicial executions,
Christof Heyns, condemned the blogger's murder.
"The violent killing of another critical voice in Bangladesh
shows that serious threats to freedom of expression persist
in the country," the pair said in a statement on Friday,
calling for a prompt and thorough investigation.
"It is vital to ensure the identification of those responsible
for this and the previous horrendous crimes, as well as those
who may have masterminded the attacks."
There have been at least five bloggers attacked in
Bangladesh since 2013, four of them since February of this
year.
This is Niloy Neel, he used to post about atheism on
Facebook, now he's been decapitated: iheu.org/niloy-
neel-fou…
11:02 AM - 7 Aug 2015
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IHEU
@IHEU
"There a is serious lack of inertia in part of Bangladesh
authorities to investigate these thoroughly and find the
actual culprits behind all these killings," Al Jazeera's Tanvir
Chowdhury, reporting from Dhaka, said.
On May 12, Ananta Bijoy Das, another blogger, was killed in
the Subid Bazar area of Sylhet city as he walked to in the
morning.
In March, blogger Washiqur Rahman Babu was hacked to
death in Dhaka by three men over alleged anti-Islamic
writings, with two of the suspected attackers caught near
the scene.
In February, Bangladeshi born American writer-blogger Avijit
Roy was killed near the Dhaka University campus.
At least in two of the cases, the killers were apprehended,
while in other cases only suspects were arrested. Authorities
said their links to "radical Islamist groups" are "under
investigation."
Sumit Galhotra, a spokesman at the New York-based
Committee to Protect Journalists, told Al Jazeera that the
latest incident "serve as a wake-up call" for the government,
to do "everything necessary" to arrest and prosecute the
attackers.
"Unless the government establishes accountability on these
cases, these attacks will continue," he said, adding that
many Bangladeshi bloggers are coming threat for their work.
