Al-Qaeda's Bangladesh branch claims killing of law student

An al-Qaeda linked banned Islamist group in Bangladesh has claimed responsibility for the murder of a law student who posted comments against radical Islamists on Facebook and went into hiding after receiving death threats.
According to the SITE Intelligence group, a US-based monitoring organisation, Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent's Bangladesh unit Ansar al-Islam posted a statement yesterday online claiming that its members carried out the brutal attack on 28-year-old Nazimuddin Samad in "vengeance".
Samad was hacked by machete-wielding militants before being shot dead from close range here this week, the latest in a series of brutal attacks on secular bloggers and activists in the Muslim majority country.

"This operation was conducted to teach a lesson to the blasphemers of this land whose poisonous tongues are constantly abusing Allah...The religion of Islam and the Messenger...Under the pretext of so-called 'freedom of speech'," self-proclaimed Ansar al-Islam spokesman Mufti Abdullah Ashraf said in a statement.
The government, however, rejected the claim, saying there is no presence of the international terror group on its soil.
"This is rubbish...You have seen such claims in the past also but our investigations so far found no presence of any international terrorist group in Bangladesh," Home Ministry's additional secretary Abu Hena Muneem said.

Samad was "aware of death threats" for writing against religious extremism, but he could not avoid getting killed in the end. He went into hiding at Bianibazar in Sylhet for some days after getting the threats. He also deactivated his Facebook account for some 15 days, bdnews24.Com reported.

Communist Party of Bangladesh's Sylhet unit leader Golam Rabbi Chowdhury said Samad told him in February that he had deactivated his Facebook account "under pressure".
Meanwhile, a senior police officer said repeated claims of IS or AQIS involvement in such murders appeared to be part of a desperate campaign to show Bangladesh as a country exposed to international terrorism.
Samad was on a hit list of 84 atheist bloggers that a group of radical Islamists prepared and sent to Bangladesh's interior ministry.
The victim, who hailed from Sylhet, was the information and research secretary of Sylhet district unit of Bangabandhu Jatiya Jubo Parishad. He was also an activist of Gonojagoron Moncho's Sylhet wing.

There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh over the past six months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers and foreigners.
Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home.