No headway yet in Avijit murder investigations

Contrary to government claims, there is little progress of any significance in the investigation into last week’s murder of writer-blogger Avijit Roy.

State Minister for Home Affairs Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on Thursday told reporters that so far two suspects had been arrested.
 
But officials of different law-enforcing agencies could only confirm the arrest of blogger Farabi Shafiur Rahman.
 
An FBI team arrived in Dhaka on Wednesday night to help investigate the American-Bangladeshi writer’s gruesome killing.
 
Avijit, 42, was hacked to death on the Dhaka University campus on Feb 26 by suspected Islamist radicals. His wife and fellow blogger Rafida Ahmed Bonya was seriously injured in the attack.
 
Bonya, a naturalised US citizen like her slain Atlanta-based bioengineer husband, has returned there for better treatment.
 
Four days after the murder, RAB arrested Farabi, who is known in the media for his pro-radical-and-extremist posts and blogging.
 
He was arrested at the capital’s Jatrabarhi when he was trying to leave Dhaka.
 
Rahman, in different statuses and comments, had posted pictures of Avijit with his family and threatened to kill him when he returned to Bangladesh. 
 
He also posted religiously provocative statuses from a Facebook page.
 
Right after his arrest, RAB’s Additional Director General Col Ziaul Ahsan had told bdnews24.com that the fundamentalist blogger was the ‘prime suspect in writer Avijit Roy’s murder’.
 
The Detective Branch (DB) of police, leading the murder investigation, are interrogating him in their custody for 10 days.
 
But even after two days of questioning, Rahman had not revealed anything useful to the investigators, officials privy to the matter said.

An official on condition of anonymity told bdnews24.com: “We’ve got nothing substantial from him (Rahman) in two days.”

However, investigators suspect that extremists murdered Avijit for his writings against communalism, fanaticism and religious superstition.

He had been receiving regular threats on his life.

The attack and killing were quite similar to the murders of legendary writer Humayun Azad and blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider, and could be linked, they believed.

Regarding Avijit’s murder, which caused an international outcry, State Minister Kamal on Thursday told reporters that the probe had made progress. “We are on the right track.”

He said two people were arrested but did not give any details. The minister had made the same claim on Tuesday too.

He had only provided Farabi Shafiur Rahman’s name.

However, the spokespersons for both the DB and RAB on Thursday told bdnews24.com that they only knew about Rahman’s arrest.

About the minister’s claim, DB Joint Commissioner Monirul Islam said, “I don’t know whether any other law-enforcing agency has arrested anyone else.”

RAB had handed over Rahman to the DB after nabbing him on Mar 2. A Dhaka court granted the detectives 10 days to grill him on the following day.

Meanwhile, the four-member team of FBI met the Detective Branch officials on Thursday noon. They discussed the progress of the case and the evidence with the officials.

A DB official, who declined to be named, told bdnews24.com that they were not expecting anything more than guidance and logistics support from the FBI team.

Regarding the team’s arrival, the junior home minister said, “It’s only natural that the FBI will come because Avijit was a US citizen. Both parties will make suggestions if there are any.”

The FBI had sent a team in 2004 to provide support and investigate the grenade attack on an Awami League rally that killed many party leaders and left scores of others, including its chief Sheikh Hasina, injured.

But the BNP-Jamaat government's lukewarm response acted as a dampener and the FBI pulled out of the probe.

A police official, who was a part of that investigation, told bdnews24.com: “They (FBI) had talked to Joj Mia too. But they couldn’t find out that the Joj Mia thing was cooked up. 

“Later, it was the CID that solved that mystery.”