Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN)-al-Qaeda has claimed the responsibility of killing US-Bangladeshi blogger Avijit Roy.
On February 26 evening, unidentified assailants hacked to death Roy, 45, whose writings on religion angered Islamist hardliners.
“al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) leader Asim Umar claimed credit for the murder of American citizen Avijit Roy in Bangladesh as well as other “blasphemers” there and in Pakistan,” said a reports of siteintelgroup published on May 2.
The Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE) Institute was an organisation that tracked the online activity of terrorist organisations.
The SITE Institute was founded in 2002 by Rita Katz and Josh Devon, who had left the Investigative Project, a private Islamist-terrorist tracking group.
In early 2008 it ceased its operations, and some of its staff formed the SITE Intelligence Group, a for-profit entity, to continue some of its activities.
Roy, an atheist who advocated secularism, was attacked when he walked back from Ekushey Moi Bela (book fair) with his wife on February 26 evening.
His wife was also sustained severe injuries in the attack.
Roy received death threats after publishing articles promoting secular views, science and social issues on his Bengali-language blog, Mukto-mona (Free Mind).
On March 2, Rapid Action Battalion arrested Farabi Shafiur Rahman, the key suspect of Roy murder case, at Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.
The arrest of Farabi, a self-proclaimed Islamist blogger, was made three days after the killing of Roy.
Farabi is one of the militants with whom Avijit was engaged in debate online.
During their online chat, Farabi gave death threat to Roy.
“Avijit Roy lives in America. So it is not possible to kill him now. He will be killed as soon as he returns home,” Farabi wrote in one of his post.
Roy had said he received threats from Islamist hardliners in Bangladesh last year when his book, The Virus of Faith, was released at a book fair.
“The death threats started flowing to my e-mail inbox on a regular basis,” he wrote.
“I suddenly found myself a target of militant Islamists and terrorists. A well-known extremist… openly issued death threats to me through his numerous Facebook entries.
Farabi, a student of Chittagong University, had been arrested for his social media comments supporting the killing of blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider, an activist of Shahbagh movement.
He was later released on bail.