B’desh police probe local radicals in latest attacks

DHAKA: Police in Bangladesh said Sunday that they were investigating the possibility a local radical Islamic group was behind two attacks on publishing houses this weekend that left a publisher of secular books dead and another critically wounded.

The banned group Ansarullah Bangla Team is the main focus of an investigation into Saturday’s attacks, Munirul Islam, a senior police detective, told reporters. The two publishers who were apparently targeted in the attacks had links to a blogger who was killed earlier this year in an attack claimed by Ansarullah Bangla Team.

Publisher Faisal Arefin Deepan was hacked to death in his Dhaka office in the second attack Saturday. The first attack left publisher Ahmed Rahim Tutul in critical condition, while two writers suffered

THE POLICE CONFIRMED THAT THE BANNED ANSARULLAH BANGLA TEAM IS THE FOCUS OF THEIR INVESTIGATION INTO THE ATTACKS

less serious wounds.

Deepan’s Jagriti publishing house and Tutul’s Shudhdhoswar had both published works of Bangladeshi-American blogger and writer Avijit Roy, who was hacked to death in February as he walked on the campus of Dhaka University with his wife.

Roy is one of four atheist bloggers murdered in Bangladesh this year. Ansarullah Bangla Team claimed responsibility for all four attacks and recently threatened to kill more bloggers.