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 succeed in a verdict.
The males brutally maimed award-winning creator and language professor Humayun Azad outdoors a guide truthful in 2004 — the primary in a wave of violent assaults on free speech advocates within the Muslim-majority nation.
Images 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 searching for therapy in Germany.
Two of the attackers are nonetheless at massive, and a fifth member was shot lifeless by police in 2014 after reportedly trying to flee a jail van.
“Four 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, advised AFP.
The perpetrators have been members 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 was additionally accountable for a sequence of lethal bomb blasts across the flip of the century, and a number of other senior members have been executed in 2007.
Security outdoors 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 associates, are you happy? Did you get your required verdict?” he requested.
‘Long time to get justice’
The creator’s daughter Mauli Azad welcomed the decision and mentioned authorities ought to chase down the 2 perpetrators nonetheless on the run.
“Though it took a very long time to get justice, we’re nonetheless pleased,” she mentioned.
“Now we wish to see the execution as quickly as doable.”
But different relations have expressed their dismay on the glacial tempo of the trial.
“I’ve no real interest in the decision. What’s the purpose of a verdict after 18 years?” Azad’s brother Manjur Kabir advised on-line information portal Bdnews24 Tuesday.
Azad’s widow “feels the identical”, he added.
Azad shot to fame within the Nineteen Eighties as a daily columnist earlier than branching out into novels and books of poetry.
He received the Bangla Academy Award, the nation’s high literature prize, in 1986.
The author’s homicide was adopted years later by a sequence 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 guide 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.
