Dhaka vows to hunt down blogger's killers

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said on Saturday that Bangladesh's intelligence agencies were busy trying to find the gang of machete-wielding attackers who hacked secular blogger Niloy Neel to death on Friday.

"We hope we'll catch the killers soon. They'll be hunted down," Khan told the AFP news agency. Khan rejected criticism that his government was not doing enough to keep liberal bloggers safe and said his government was "trying" to protect the activists.

The minister also argued that the slain blogger "did not file any general diary [complaint with the police.]" However, in a Facebook comment on May 15, Niloy Neel, also known as Niloy Chowdhury or Chakrabarti, said he had been followed by two men for protesting the murder of blogger Avijit Roy in February this year, but that the police refused to register a complaint.

Ansar al-Islam claim responsibility

The 40-year-old online activist was killed in Dhaka's Goran area on Friday by a group of four people who entered his apartment block posing as potential tenants. Niloy Neel's wife, Asha Moni, told reporters that the men chanted "Allahu Akbar" before murdering her husband. She also filed a police complaint after the murder.

Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent's (AQIS) Bangladesh wing, Ansar al-Islam, claimed responsibility for the murder.

Niloy Neel's death is the fourth such killing of secular bloggers this year in Bangladesh. Jihadists killed Avijit Roy, editor of the website "Mukto Mona" (The Free Mind) in February. Social activist bloggers Washiqur Rahman and Ananta Bijoy Das were also killed earlier this year.

Twitter speaks up for Niloy Neel

Online activists and secular bloggers who write on rationalism and criticize orthodox religious or fundamental beliefs are often targeted by jihadist groups in Bangladesh. The militants have allegedly circulated a "hit list" of 84 such bloggers on the internet, vowing to kill them for their liberal ideas.

Bangladesh's prominent liberal author Taslima Nasreen wrote:

Rights group Amnesty International demanded that the killers be punished as soon as possible.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) tweeted its plans to launch an independent investigation into Niloy Neel's killing.

mg/jlw (AFP, AP)