Six members of US Congress want murderers of writer Avijit Roy brought to justice

Six US congressmen and women have written to the Secretary of State John Kerry to make sure that the murderers of the Bangladeshi-American writer-blogger Avijit Roy are brought to justice.

They said the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris last month, the synagogue shootings in Denmark two weeks ago, and Avijit’s murder in Bangladesh are “representative of the disturbing, and growing, number of attacks around the world by religious fanatics against freedom of speech advocates”.

“We must stand strong for freedom of speech and freedom of thought,” said the letter signed by Mike Honda, Ed Royce, Eliot Engel, Grace Meng, Steve Chabot and Ami Bera.

“The United States cannot allow extremists to operate with impunity”. 

They also said the US embassy and the Department of State “must remain engaged”, and work with Bangladesh’s government “to insist that Dr. Roy’s killers are brought to justice”.

And at the same time, they said, “to ensure that threats to other secularists, and writers in Bangladesh are taken seriously”.

“We are deeply troubled by the brutal public murder of American writer Dr. Avijit Roy in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on February 26, 2015,” read the letter.

Atlanta-based Avijit along with his wife and fellow blogger Rafida Ahmed Bonya were brutally hacked near the Amar Ekushey Book Fair at Dhaka University on Feb 26 night.

He died later and Bonya was undergoing treatment in Dhaka, having lost her thumb.

She is also a US citizen and left for the US on Tuesday for treatment.

The US has condemned the attack in “strongest terms” and offered assistance for investigations.

The government has taken up the offer and the US embassy spokesperson in Dhaka on Tuesday told bdnews24.com that a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) team would come “shortly” to assist Bangladeshi law-enforcing agencies.

The FBI representative at the embassy has already contacted with the Avijit’s family and the police.

The members of the Congress said the “prominent Bangladeshi-American writer and blogger… championed free speech, and advocated liberal secular discourse in Bangladesh, through his books and Mukto-Mona blog platform”.

They also said that Avijit had reportedly been receiving death threats from Islamist fundamentalists in Bangladesh, and “it is presumed that this was a religiously motivated attack”.

Avijit’s family blamed extremists for the attack, which was similar to that on writer Humayun Azad in the same month back in 2004.

He had been facing threats from Islamist radicals for his secular blogging for a while.

Law-enforcing agencies have arrested Farabi Shafiur Rahman, and a member of the banned Islamist outfit ‘Ansarullah Bangla Team’ in this connection.

Rahman was earlier arrested for inciting attacks on bloggers on the social media after blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider’s murder in 2013, but later secured bail.

He had allegedly posted death threats directed at Avijit, noted for his writing against religious extremism.

The Ansarullah Bangla Team had been posting inciting speeches against bloggers, according to those arrested earlier for the murder of Haider, another outspoken blogger.

The Islamist outfit came to light when police arrested its chief Mufti Jasim Uddin Rahmani and 30 others from Barguna in August 2013.