A university professor was murdered in northwestern Bangladesh Saturday, in an attack similar to other killings by suspected Islamist militants.
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Police said English professor Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, was hacked from behind with machetes.
The attack was similar to those perpetrated by ISIL, who have claimed killings of secularist bloggers in the country. He also led a cultural group and used to edit a literary magazine.
Referring to her own situation in her native country, she said, “In 1990s, Islamists issued fatwa against me, and Bangladesh government protected them not me”.
Police said he was murdered due to a personal rivalry.
There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months, targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners.
Two or three assailants rode up on a motorcycle and attacked Siddique, slitting his throat and hacking him to death.
Witnesses report that the professor was found lying in a pool of blood near his home, where he was waiting for a bus to take him to the university campus some 125 miles north west of Dhaka.
The grizzly death comes only two years after another Rajshahi University professor, identified as Shafiul Islam, was hacked to death by unknown attackers.
Muslim-majority Bangladesh is officially secular but critics say the government has failed to properly address the attacks.
Amnesty International’s South Asia director, Champa Patel, said that the murder of Professor Siddique was “inexcusable”.
US-based private SITE Intelligence Group said the Islamic State has claimed the killing.
He said the investigation of Siddiquee’s murder has been launched its perpetrators would be arrested soon.
The professor was a “man of peace, literature and culture”, who stayed away from “any sort of trouble” and political activities.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the killing, according to Amaq, the terror group’s media agency.
Though his murder was initially claimed by radical group “Ansaral Islam”, the police later ruled out that possibility.
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Hundreds of students at Rajshahi University are reported to have protested on campus against their teacher’s death and demanded the immediate arrest of the perpetrators.
