Men convicted of fatally stabbing the Bangladeshi-American author Avijit Roy and his publisher fled custody in an unsettling reminder of ext
by Saif Hasnat, Nov. 20, 2022
DHAKA, Bangladesh — Two men on death row in Bangladesh for the high-profile killings of a secular author and his publisher escaped Sunday while en route to a hearing in the capital, the authorities said.
Men on motorcycles attacked police officers escorting the prisoners to court in Dhaka by spraying something in the officers’ faces before whisking the convicts away, the police said.
The prisoners were among those convicted in the murders of the Bangladeshi-American writer,Avijit Roy, in 2015 and of his publisher, Faisal Arefin Dipan, later that year. The killings represented anunsettling rise in extremist violencein Bangladesh. Another of Mr. Roy’s publishers and several intellectuals and bloggers critical of fundamentalist Islam were also killed that year.
The violence sent a chilling message to secular writers and publishers in Bangladesh, where a bitter cultural battle has raged over whether the country is, or should be, a Muslim state. The group that claimed responsibility for Mr. Roy’s and Mr. Dipan’s killings — Ansarullah Bangla Team, or Helpers of Allah in Bangladesh — was banned in May 2015.
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