Atheist US blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh

An intellectual and writer who was hacked to death in Dhaka had been begged by his wife not to return to Bangladesh for a literary festival.

Avajit Roy, 42, and his wife Rafida Ahmed Bonya, 35, were ambushed and dragged from their rickshaw on Thursday night after attending the festival. After the attack, Mr Roy died on the pavement while his wife, who lost a finger, pleaded to passers-by for help. Two large machetes were found at the scene.

Mr Roy, who championed secularism and humanism on his Mukto-Mona blog, was an engineer by training. He wrote 10 books, of which the most famous is Virus of Faith, a critique of religious fundamentalism. He had returned to Bangladesh from America to promote his new work.

But he was aware of the risks he faced. Last February, a man named Farabi Shafiur Rahman posted on Facebook that “Avijit Roy lives in America and so it is not possible to kill him right now. He will be murdered when he comes back.”

Mr Roy’s murder provoked an outcry in Bangladesh and the government was criticised for not taking earlier threats seriously. Two years ago, another secular intellectual, Ahmed Rajib Haider, died in almost identical circumstances at the hands of a machete-wielding gang. Mr Rahman was questioned in relation to that attack but was not charged.

According to his friends and relations, Mr Roy and his wife were alarmed by Mr Rahman’s threat. His wife, a senior manager at an American credit rating agency, had pleaded with her husband to skip the book fair in Dhaka despite the need to promote two of his books.

“Rafida did not want to come to Bangladesh,” said one close friend who asked not to be identified. “She was scared because of the threat. But [her husband] was really adamant that they should come together during the book fair. He had grown up around the Dhaka university area, and he had a very deep feeling for the book festival, and so he wanted to visit, and wanted her to come, and one of the books had been dedicated to her.”

Several people who attended the book festival had also warned the couple to be careful. “Rafida was always saying to me that people at the book festival – the publishers, the friends, bloggers – should be careful, that he had a death threat not just from Farabi but others,” the friend said. “[She said] That now they were in Dhaka, they should not be alone, that they should always be in groups, and should not stay at the same place. They had been going to the book festival every day and people were always telling them this. But I think they thought that they were always with people and so there was limited risk that something would happen.”

Police sources said Mr Rahman, who is believed to be a member of an extremist organisation, possibly Hizbut Tahrir, is under surveillance but has not yet been arrested.

The Mukto-Mona blog has put a message up in white against a black background which reads: “We are grieving but undefeated.”