ATTACK ON BLOGGERS: Slow progress in probe gives impetus to attackers [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

ATTACK ON BLOGGERS: Slow progress in probe gives impetus to attackers

Local August 08, 2015

Investigation into cases relating to attacks and killings of bloggers have barely seen progress, although such killings have continued since 2013.
Delayed investigation and trials are encouraging the assailants to continue with their crimes, said fellow activists of the bloggers.
On Friday, the country witnessed the latest killing of another blogger, Niloy Chatterjee, 40, as miscreants stabbed and hacked him to death inside his rented house in the capital’s Goran.
According to media reports and police documentation, at least 15 attacks were carried out against bloggers or online activists since the major attack on blogger Asif Mohiuddin in the capital’s Uttara on January 13, 2013.
Among the 15 incidents, the attacks and killings of bloggers Ahmed Rajib Haidar
Shovon in Dhaka on February 14, 2013, Avijit Roy and his wife in Dhaka on February 26 and Ananta Bijoy in Sylhet on May 12 had triggered more outrage than the other incidents.
In most of the cases, the assailants attacked the bloggers with sharp weapons and either chopped or hacked them.
Being attacked or worried over their fate, at least four bloggers, including Asif, left the country while at least eight others are in the process to flying out to different countries in the West, said bloggers and their family members.
‘The fundamentalists want to frighten the secular force and their spirit,’ a blogger and online activist Mahmudul Haque Munshi told New Age in reaction to the latest attack.
He alleged ‘as the government is hardly taking any action against the perpetrators the attacks and killings are continuing.’
In a recent report, rights watchdog Odhikar expressed grave concern as freedom of expression is being violated and demanded justice through impartial investigation into the killings of bloggers.
The investigators said the killings of bloggers, in most of the cases, were interlinked, but they took time in completing ‘through investigation’ in order to ensure justice.
Most of the bloggers and online activists got killed because of their ‘writings’ and ‘online activities,’ the investigators had found.
On February 26 night, Bangladeshi born American blogger Avijit Roy, 42, and his wife Rafida Ahmed Bonnya, 35, were attacked by two assailants while the couple was waiting for tea at a road side stall in front of Suhrawardy Uddan adjacent to TSC in the Dhaka University campus, emerging from the Ekushey Book Fair.
Both were admitted to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital, where Avijit Roy died after two hours.
Despite the tight security presence, the criminals were able to attack the couple and escape, triggering huge outburst and international condemnation.
A week later, the Rapid Action Battalion officials arrested a suspect, Shafiur Rahman Farabi, a 29-year-old drop out, in connection with the killing, as the suspect earlier issued threats to the writer.
The investigators, however, found no evidence of his link to the killing but said Farabi, also a blogger inspired with Islamism, had inspired the attackers.
When approached about the latest situation into the investigation, Detective Brach’s additional deputy commissioner Rajib Al Masud, who is supervising the case, claimed they were trying to nab the ‘attackers.’
Asked about the slow progress, he replied ‘good investigation takes a long time.’
After a month, another blogger Oyashiqur Rahman Babu was hacked to death in Tejgaon industrial area on March 30.
The killing again triggered huge protest in the capital and elsewhere as two youths were handed over to police by the locals.
‘Apart from the two, we found the connection of another person called Rayhan. We are trying to verify his identity,’ said Saiful Islam, another additional deputy commissioner stationed in the DB.
He, however, said Redwanul Azad Rana was the plotter of most of the murder of bloggers.
After a month’s break, ‘masked’ assailants carried out another similar attack on blogger Ananta Bijoy at Subidhbazar Nurani Dighirpar in north-eastern Sylhet on May 12 morning when he was going to his workplace in Chhatak. In the afternoon a so-called ‘outfit’ of Ansarullah Bangla Team acknowledged his killing in a twitter message.
Ansarullah Bangla had also claimed responsibility for the previous attacks on Avijit and Oyashiqur. The government, earlier, banned the Ansarullah Bangla Team.
The CID’s special superintendent (organised crime) Abdullahel Baki said that they had arrested one Sylhet-based photo journalist following the killing of Ananta.
‘We got a few leads from the arrested person. We are analysing those clues,’ said Baki, who is supervising the case.
Meanwhile, trials in the cases filed after the killing of blogger Ahmed Rajib Haidar Shovon and the attack on his fellow Asif Mohiuddin in 2013 are pending with the court in Dhaka.
Detectives of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police found the links of militant Ansarullah Bangla Team in the attacks on the bloggers and many of its operatives are already in jail.
Blogger Ahmed Rajib Haidar Shovon, an architect by profession and an activist of the Shahbagh Ganajagaran Mancha movement, was hacked to death in the capital’s Pallabi on February 15, 2013.
On January 28, 2014, inspector Nibaran Chandra Barman of DB submitted a charge sheet against eight people, including Ansarullah Bangla Team chieftain Mufti Muhammad Jasimuddin Rahmani.
As of today, five out of 55 prosecution witnesses testified in the Speedy Trial Tribunal-3.
Before the killing of Rajib, miscreants carried out a similar attack on Asif Mohiuddin, 29, a blogger and self-styled atheist, and stabbed him in the head near his office at Uttara on the night of January 13, 2013. Asif, an engineer by profession, was later arrested in the face of intense pressure from Islamist groups.
After being released, he flew to Germany and has been staying there.
‘We are really worried for our security and so we are not aware what the current situation of the trial is,’ a family member of Asif told New Age on Friday.
According to the media and intelligence reports, following the attack on Asif in January 2013, many targeted attacks were carried out, which left bloggers either killed or critically injured.
In 2013, assailants murdered BUET student Arif Raihan Deep in Dhaka in April while another blogger Jafor Munshi was beaten to death in February.
The same year, assailants injured blogger Saniur Rahman in Mirpur in March while a similar attack left blogger Rakib Al Mamun injured in June and BUET student Tonmoy Ahmed in August.
In September 2014, blogger Ashraful Islam was killed in his flat located behind the Jahangirnagar University campus.