America
Prime suspect arrested in Bangladeshi blogger's murder
Dhaka, March 2
The prime accused in the murder
in Dhaka last week of writer-blogger Avijit Roy has been arrested by
the elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) of Bangladesh, media
reported on Monday.
Farabi Shafiur Rahman was earlier also
arrested for inciting attacks on bloggers on the social media after
blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider’s murder in 2013, bdnews24.com reported on
Monday.
He had then secured bail from the Dhaka High Court.
RAB’s
Additional Director General Ziaul Ahsan said Farabi Shafiur Rahman was
nabbed on Monday morning from Dhaka’s Jatrabarhi area while he was
trying to leave the city.
“Fundamentalist blogger Farabi is the prime suspect in writer Avijit Roy’s murder,†Ahsan said.
Farabi Shafiur Rahman had also threatened an online bookshop, rokomari.com, to pull out Roy’s books from their site.
On
February 26, Roy and his wife were dragged off a cycle rickshaw at a
Teacher-Student Centre (TSC) intersection by two unidentified assailants
and attacked with machetes.
Roy died of a fatal gash to the head while his wife and fellow blogger Rafida Ahmed Banna was severely injured.
On
Saturday, following a tip-off, RAB conducted a pre-dawn raid at a
five-storey building in the northeastern port city of Chittagong and
arrested three suspected militants.
“We have seized 30 grenades.
It appears they could have made some 300-400 bombs with the explosives
we found at the den,†RAB’s commanding officer in Chittagong Lt. Col
Mista Uddin said in a primary briefing.
Meanwhile, on Sunday,
Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali said it has decided
to take the help of the US' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the
probe into Roy's murder following Washington's offer in this regard.