DHAKA // A Bangladeshi law student who posted against Islamic fundamentalism on his Facebook page has been murdered, police said on Thursday, the latest in a series of killings of secular activists and bloggers in the country.
Nazimuddin Samad, a 26-year-old atheist who had taken part in protests against hardline Muslim leaders, was attacked late on Wednesday near his university in Dhaka by unknown assailants carrying machetes.
“They hacked his head with a machete. As he fell down, one of them shot him in the head with a pistol from close range. He died on the spot,” said deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Syed Nurul Islam.
“It is a case of targeted killing. But no group has claimed responsibility,” Mr Islam said, adding that police were investigating whether Samad was murdered for his writing.
The attackers followed Samad home from an evening class on Wednesday before setting upon him.
The Dhaka Tribune newspaper said the attackers shouted “Allahu Akbar” as they attacked Samad on a busy road near Dhaka’s Jagannath University, where he was a law student.
It was the sixth such killing in 15 months and sparked protests in Dhaka, where more than 1,000 students blocked a busy road to demand the attackers be brought to justice.
No one has yet been prosecuted for the murders of four atheist bloggers and a secular publisher hacked to death last year, although police have arrested members of a banned group called the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT).
Imran Sarker, who leads Bangladesh’s largest online secular activist group, said Samad’s name was on a list of 84 atheist campaigners that a hardline group had sent to the home ministry in 2013.
Samad had joined nationwide protests that year against hardline Muslim leaders accused of committing war crimes during the country’s war of independence, and is the fifth person on the list to be killed.
“He was a secular online activist and a loud voice against any social injustice. He was against Islamic fundamentalism,” said Mr Sarker, head of the Bangladesh Bloggers Association.
Samad had posted several comments on Facebook criticising radical Islam and making fun of hardliners.
In one, he described religion as “the most barbaric invention”, while another mocked a cleric who was recently arrested for raping a young boy.
“In raping a boy, the Hefajat-e-Islam cleric is only carrying out his religious duty. It’s the first step towards establishing pure Islam,” said Samad, referring to the hardline group that the cleric belongs to.
Secular groups have called nationwide protests and rallies to demand more protection for publishers, bloggers and writers, some of whom have fled the country or gone into hiding.
“The persistent failure of the Bangladeshi government and the international community to better protect threatened thinkers has created a climate of fear and direct threat to free thought in the country,” Pen America said in a statement condemning the latest murder.
Samad had only recently arrived in Dhaka from the northeastern city of Sylhet to study law.
Deputy police commissioner Islam said the attackers had likely been monitoring the student prior to his arrival in Dhaka.
Samad’s childhood friend and fellow activist Gulam Rabbi Chowdhury said he had gone into hiding, although he did not know whether he had received any specific threats.
“When I last met him in February, he told me that he deactivated his Facebook page for a few weeks and left Sylhet city to live in hiding in his village,” Mr Chowdhury said.
Sylhet police chief Kamrul Ahsan said Samad had not complained of any threats.
Several foreigners have been murdered in recent months in Bangladesh, which has also suffered attacks on minority Sufi and Shiite Muslims.
A long-running political crisis in the majority Sunni Muslim but officially secular country has radicalised opponents of the government and analysts say Islamist extremists pose a growing danger.
* Agence France-Presse