DHAKA: A Bangladesh court docket sentenced 4 extremists to hold Wednesday for his or her deadly machete assault on a celebrated creator, in a case that took just about 20 years to succeed in a verdict. The boys brutally maimed award-winning creator and language professor Humayun Azad outdoor a guide honest in 2004 — the primary in a wave of violent assaults on unfastened speech advocates within the Muslim-majority nation.
Pictures of a blood-soaked Azad after the assault stunned the rustic, and a legion of lovers mourned when the 56-year-old died a number of months later whilst in quest of remedy in Germany. Two of the attackers are nonetheless at massive, and a 5th member used to be shot lifeless through police in 2014 after reportedly making an attempt to escape a jail van.
“4 had been passed down the demise penalty over the homicide together with two who had been sentenced to demise in absentia,” Abdullah Abu, leader prosecutor within the capital Dhaka, instructed AFP. The perpetrators had been individuals of Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a banned Islamist outfit whose chief ordered Azad’s homicide after the creator penned a guide that mocked and criticised fundamentalists.
The organisation used to be additionally liable for a chain of fatal bomb blasts across the flip of the century, and several other senior individuals had been finished in 2007. Safety outdoor the court docket used to be tight, with dozens of officials status guard. Mizanur Rahman, one of the most two males in custody over the homicide, mocked journalists as he used to be led again into a jail van after the sentence. “Journalist buddies, are you happy? Did you get your required verdict?” he requested.
‘Very long time to get justice’
The creator’s daughter Mauli Azad welcomed the decision and mentioned government must chase down the 2 perpetrators nonetheless at the run. “Even though it took a very long time to get justice, we’re nonetheless glad,” she mentioned. “Now we need to see the execution once conceivable.” However different members of the family have expressed their dismay on the glacial tempo of the trial. “I’ve little interest in the decision. What’s the purpose of a verdict after 18 years?” Azad’s brother Manjur Kabir instructed on-line information portal Bdnews24 Tuesday.
Azad’s widow “feels the similar”, he added. Azad shot to repute within the Nineteen Eighties as a typical columnist prior to branching out into novels and books of poetry. He received the Bangla Academy Award, the rustic’s most sensible literature prize, in 1986. The creator’s homicide used to be adopted years later through a chain of deadly machete assaults on secular and atheist writers in addition to homosexual rights activists through a JMB offshoot.
11 years to the day after the assault on Azad, US-based creator Avijit Roy used to be hacked to demise as he used to be leaving the similar guide honest. Bangladesh has since introduced a national crackdown on Islamist teams, killing greater than 100 militants in raids around the nation and arresting greater than 1,000 suspected extremists. – AFP