US blogger's killers escape on motorbikes from Bangladeshi court
Source: The Guardian
US blogger’s killers escape on motorbikes from Bangladeshi court
Men on death row for murder of secular writer snatched by bikers who sprayed police with chemical
Hannah Ellis-Petersen South Asia correspondent
Mon 21 Nov 2022 12.33 GMT
First published on Mon 21 Nov 2022 10.21 GMT
Two Islamist militants who were on death row in Bangladesh for the killing of a US blogger critical of fundamentalist Islam have made a dramatic escape on motorbikes while being escorted to a court hearing in the capital, Dhaka.
The two men were among those convicted of the murder of Avijit Roy, an American-Bangladeshi writer and blogger who was hacked to death with machetes in the streets of Dhaka in 2015.
Roy, who was a prolific writer on secularism and had criticised religious extremism in his widely read blog, had faced death threats before his killing. His wife was severely injured in the attack.
Roy’s publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan was murdered later that year, stabbed in his office by Islamist militants from the same group, and several other bloggers and intellectuals were also targeted during a wave of violence. Five members of the Islamist outfit were sentenced to death for Roy’s killing and eight were put on death row for Diplan’s killing.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/21/two-islamist-killers-of-us-blogger-avijit-roy-escape-from-bangladesh-court