DHAKA: A Bangladesh court sentenced four extremists to hang on Wednesday for their fatal machete attack on a celebrated writer, in a case that took nearly two decades to reach a verdict.
The men brutally maimed award-winning author and language professor Humayun Azad, aged 56, outside a book fair in 2004 – the first in a wave of violent attacks on free speech advocates in the country.
Images of a blood-soaked Azad after the attack shocked the country and fans mourned when the poet died several months later while seeking treatment in Germany. Two of the attackers are still at large, and a fifth member was shot dead by police in 2014 after reportedly attempting to flee a prison van.
“Four were handed down the death penalty over the murder including two who were sentenced to death in absentia,” Abdullah Abu, chief prosecutor in the capital Dhaka told media.
The perpetrators were members of Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a banned outfit whose leader ordered Azad’s murder after the author penned a book that mocked and criticised fundamentalists. The organisation was also responsible for a series of deadly bomb blasts around the turn of the century and several senior members were executed in 2007.
There was no immediate comment from Azad’s family after the verdict. His son moved to Germany after allegedly facing online threats. But relatives have expressed dismay over the slow pace of the trial.
The writer’s murder was followed years later by a series of fatal machete attacks on secular and atheist writers as well as gay rights activists by a JMB offshoot. Eleven years to the day after the attack on Azad, US-based writer Avijit Roy was hacked to death as he was leaving the same book fair.
