Eight including State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam get death threat

Eight people, including State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam, have received death threats, purportedly from ‘Ansar Al Islam’.

The threat letter, sent by post, reached the office of a Rajshahi-based local newspaper Daily Sunshine on Monday morning.
 
Apart from Alam, those threatened through the letter are former Rajshahi mayor AHM Khairuzzaman Liton, Rajshahi University Vice-Chancellor Muhammad Mizanuddin, writer Hasan Azizul Haque, Managing Editor of Daily Sunshine Yunus Ali, DIG of police’s Rajshahi Range Iqbal Bahar, former Rajshahi Education Board chairman Abul Hayat and the Awami League’s Rajshahi metropolitan unit General Secretary Dablu Sarkar.
 
Hasan Azizul Haque had also received a death threat over his mobile phone a few days ago.

The letterhead identified the issuers of the threat as Ansar Al Islam (al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent). A line in the letter said, “See below a list of our targets in Rajshahi.”

The foreign ministry also received a similar letter, the state minister’s Special Aide Sirajul Islam told bdnews24.com on Monday.

However, Dablu Sarkar said neither he nor Khairuzzaman Liton received any such letter.

The DIG of Rajshahi Range said he too did not receive any such threat. 

“A brief list has been prepared..... All of them will be killed,” the letter said at the outset.

It mentioned the name of Mufti Abdullah Ashraf as the head of Ansar Al Islam (al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent) and Rajshahi College’s Professor Habibur Rahman as the chief of the organisation’s Rajshahi wing.

When contacted Habibur Rahman said, “It's all fake. My name might have been used by some group to harass me.”​