Attackers hacked to death a university professor in Bangladesh on Saturday, the police said, adding that the assault bore the hallmarks of previous killings by Islamist militants of secular and atheis
Attackers hacked to death a university professor in Bangladesh on Saturday, the police said, adding that the assault bore the hallmarks of previous killings by Islamist militants of secular and atheist activists.
The ISIS group claimed responsibility for the killing, accusing the professor of calling for atheism.
“Islamic State fighters assassinate a university teacher for calling to atheism in the city of Rajshahi in Bangladesh,” the jihadist group’s Amaq news agency said in a statement.
The police said English professor Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, was hacked from behind with machetes as he walked to the bus station from his home in the country’s north-western city of Rajshahi, where he taught at the city’s public university.
“His neck was hacked at least three times and was 70-80 per cent slit. By examining the nature of the attack, we suspect that it was carried out by extremist groups,” Rajshahi metropolitan police commissioner Mohammad Shamsuddin said.
Mr Shamsuddin said the police had not yet named any suspects but added that the pattern of the attack fitted with previous killings by Islamist militants.
Nahidul Islam, a deputy commissioner of police, said that Siddique was involved in cultural programmes, including music, and set up a music school at Bagmara.
“The attack is similar to the ones carried out on (atheist) bloggers in the recent past,” Mr Islam said, adding nobody had been arrested yet.
Homegrown Islamist militants have been blamed for a number of murders of secular bloggers and online activists since 2013, the most recent being in the capital Dhaka early in April.
The police said that in each of the attacks unidentified assailants hacked the victim to death with machetes or cleavers.
Eight members of banned Islamist group Ansarullah Bangla Team, including a top cleric who is said to have founded the group, were convicted in 2015 for the murder of atheist blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider in February 2013.
Sakhawat Hossain, a fellow English professor from the university and a friend, said the slain teacher played the tanpura and wrote poems and short stories.
“He used to lead a cultural group called Komol Gandhar and edit a bi-annual literary magazine with the same name. But he never wrote or spoke against religion in public,” Prof. Hossain said.
Hundreds of students of Rajshahi University staged impromptu protests, marching on the campus in batches and shouting slogans, demanding the arrest of the killers, local police chief Humayun Kabir said.
“The students were shocked at the latest brutal killing of their teachers. Some 500 of them shouted slogans and joined the marches calling for protection of all teachers and exemplary punishment for the killers,” Mostafiz Mishu, a student who witnessed the protests, said.
