Bangladesh has since launched a nationwide crackdown on Islamist teams. (Representational)
Dhaka:
A Bangladesh courtroom sentenced 4 extremists to hold Wednesday for his or her deadly machete assault on a celebrated author, in a case that took practically 20 years to achieve a verdict.
The boys brutally maimed award-winning writer and language professor Humayun Azad exterior a e book truthful in 2004 — the primary in a wave of violent assaults on free speech advocates within the Muslim-majority nation.
Photos of a blood-soaked Azad after the assault shocked the nation, and a legion of followers mourned when the 56-year-old died a number of months later whereas looking for therapy in Germany.
Two of the attackers are nonetheless at giant, and a fifth member was shot lifeless by police in 2014 after reportedly making an attempt to flee a jail van.
“4 have been handed down the loss of life penalty over the homicide together with two who have been sentenced to loss of life in absentia,” Abdullah Abu, chief prosecutor within the capital Dhaka, instructed AFP.
The perpetrators have been members of Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a banned Islamist outfit whose chief ordered Azad’s homicide after the writer penned a e book that mocked and criticised fundamentalists.
The organisation was additionally liable for a collection of lethal bomb blasts across the flip of the century, and a number of other senior members have been executed in 2007.
Safety exterior the courtroom was tight, with dozens of officers standing guard.
Mizanur Rahman, one of many two males in custody over the homicide, mocked reporters as he was led again into a jail van after the sentence.
“Journalist pals, are you glad? Did you get your required verdict?” he requested.
‘Very long time to get justice’
The writer’s daughter Mauli Azad welcomed the decision and stated authorities ought to chase down the 2 perpetrators nonetheless on the run.
“Although it took a very long time to get justice, we’re nonetheless glad,” she stated.
“Now we wish to see the execution as quickly as potential.”
However different relations have expressed their dismay on the glacial tempo of the trial.
“I’ve little interest in the decision. What is the level of a verdict after 18 years?” Azad’s brother Manjur Kabir instructed on-line information portal Bdnews24 Tuesday.
Azad’s widow “feels the identical”, he added.
Azad shot to fame within the Eighties as an everyday columnist earlier than branching out into novels and books of poetry.
He gained the Bangla Academy Award, the nation’s high literature prize, in 1986.
The author’s homicide was adopted years later by a collection of deadly machete assaults on secular and atheist writers in addition to homosexual rights activists by a JMB offshoot.
Eleven years to the day after the assault on Azad, US-based author Avijit Roy was hacked to loss of life as he was leaving the identical e book truthful.
Bangladesh has since launched a nationwide crackdown on Islamist teams, killing greater than 100 militants in raids throughout the nation and arresting greater than 1,000 suspected extremists.
(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
