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Bangladesh’s ideological murders are a further attack on its liberal ideals
K Anis Ahmed
Nazimuddin Samad, 28, had been on a hit list of 84 atheist bloggers that a group of radical Islamists drew up and sent to Bangladesh’s interior ministry.
“At least four assailants hacked Nazimuddin Samad’s head with a machete on Wednesday night. As he fell down, one of them shot him with a pistol from close range. He died on the spot,” deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan police Syed Nurul Islam told AFP.
“It is a case of targeted killing. But no group has claimed responsibility,” Islam said, adding police were investigating whether Samad was murdered for his writing.
The Dhaka Tribune said the assailants shouted Allahu Akbar (God is greatest) as they attacked Samad on a busy road near Dhaka’s Jagannath University, where he was a law student.
Samad was known to have been critical of state religion in the Bangladeshi constitution. In the first two lines detailing his religious views on Facebook, he stated: “Evolution is a scientific truth. Religion and race are invention of the savage and uncivil people.”
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Wafi Chowdhury, a school friend of Samad, told the Guardian: “Nazim had lived in hostels since grade six and later moved to shared room after he joined university.”
Samad had deactivated his Facebook account about a month ago at the request of his family “but I remember him telling me he would come back on Facebook soon with a grin”, said Chowdhury.
“His stay in Dhaka has been only two months. He lived in Sylhet and most of his family members are in London,” Shamir Chandra Sutradhar, an investigations officer at the Sutrapur police in Dhaka told the Guardian.
“We have not been able to identify any suspect,” said Tapan Chandra Saha, police officer in charge of the Sutrapur area of Dhaka.
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“Nazim was both hacked and shot. We have recovered bullet shells from the spot. He has been hacked on right side of head,” Saha told the Guardian.
In 2015, suspected Islamist militants hacked to death at least four atheist bloggers and a secular publisher in a long-running series of targeting killings of anti-Islam activists in the Muslim majority country.
Police arrested members of a banned group called the Ansarullah Bangla Team over those murders, although none have yet been prosecuted.
Imran Sarker, who leads Bangladesh’s largest online secular activist group and is the head of the Bangladesh Bloggers Association, said Samad had joined nationwide protests in 2013 against top Islamist leaders accused of committing war crimes during the country’s war of independence.
“He was a secular online activist and a loud voice against any social injustice. He was against Islamic fundamentalism,” said Sarker.
