AQIS claims it killed Bangladesh LGBT activist Xulhaz Mannan and his friend, says SITE
News Desk, bdnews24.com
Published: 26 Apr 2016 05:21 PM BdST Updated: 26 Apr 2016 06:39 PM BdST
Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) has reportedly taken responsibility for killing Bangladeshi gay-rights activist Xulhaz Mannan and his friend Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy.
SITE, a US-based intelligence site, published a report on Tuesday, a day after the two were hacked to death in Dhaka’s Kolabagan.
Earlier, a Twitter post by Mufti Abdullah Ashraf, spokesperson for Ansar Al Islam, AQIS’s Bangladesh unit, said their ‘mujahidins’ assassinated the two for being ‘pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh’.
“They were working day and
night to promote homosexuality among the people of this land since 1998 with
the help of their masters, the US crusaders and its Indian allies,” read the announcement.
It said further details will be added.
An editor of Bangladesh’s only LGBT-rights magazine ‘Roopbaan’, Xulhaz also worked as a programme officer for USAID.
Police said the assailants pretending to be delivery men entered his flat to hack both Mannan and Tonoy in their heads and necks, a method followed in earlier attacks on secular writers, bloggers and teachers.
Witnesses said the attackers, clad in T-shirts and jeans, fled while firing from their guns and shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’.
They injured a security guard of from the Lake Circus building and a police officer for trying to stop them.
The murders follow the killing of Rajshahi University teacher Prof AFM Rezaul Karim Siddiquee, also hacked to death, while he was catching a bus to the campus on Saturday. The AQIS also claimed it was behind the murder.
The first murder it claimed was that of secular author Avijit Roy, killed by machete-wielding assailants while leaving the Amar Ekushey Book Fair with his wife in February last year.
But the government has been denying that global terror groups were behind the series of killings. But it has failed to make headways into the investigations.
-
Chapainawabganj also wins GI tag of Fazli mango
-
Square Pharma fire safety system ‘inadequate’
-
Ban Hatirjheel water taxis: HC
-
Hajj flights begin Jun 5
-
Samrat sent back to jail
-
HC grants bail for Khaleda in Cumilla bus bombing case
-
Padma Bridge to open on Jun 25
-
Haji Salim appeals against jail term in graft case
-
After Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj wins GI certificate of Fazli mango
-
Square Pharma fire safety system was ‘inadequate’, official says
-
Employees withdraw 110 cases against Grameen Telecom, Yunus over dues
-
Ban water taxis from ‘priceless’ Hatirjheel, High Court rules
-
Bangladesh to run Hajj flights from Jun 5
-
Ex-Jubo League leader Samrat sent back to jail in ACC case
Most Read
- Teenage gunman kills 19 children and teacher at Texas elementary school
- High Court denies 4 North South University trustees anticipatory bail, turns them over to police
- Bangladesh names its longest bridge after Padma River as it opens on Jun 25
- Ban water taxis from ‘priceless’ Hatirjheel, High Court rules
- Bangladesh raises duty on imports as it cracks down on luxuries
- Russia launches all-out assault to encircle Ukraine troops in east
- BSMMU says no monkeypox case detected, warns of rumours
- Reserves rise slightly past $42bn as Bangladesh scrambles to calm a dwindling currency market
- Texas pupils' lives shattered by shooting two days before summer break
- Four trustees of North South University sent to jail, face grilling in embezzlement case