Police in Bangladesh arrested a group of Islamist militants led and sponsored by a British citizen; the group is allegedly responsible for brutal murders of two atheist bloggers.
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Two other bloggers have been killed in Bangladesh this year, though the three suspects have not been arrested for those killings.
Roy and Das are among four secular bloggers murdered in Bangladesh since the start of the year.
Rahmani is now in jail awaiting trial in the murder of another blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, in Dhaka in 2013.
MUNIR UZ ZAMAN-AFP/Getty Images A Bangladeshi social activist pays his last respects to slain US blogger of Bangladeshi origin and founder of the Mukto-Mona (Free-mind) blog site, Avijit Roy in Dhaka on March 6, 2015 after he was hacked to death by unidentified assailants in the Bangladeshi capital on February 26.
“We’ve arrested them in the capital today”, Major Maksudul Alam of the RAB said.
According to reports, Rahman is believed to be a British citizen. The police have since arrested two suspects, belonging to the same extremist organization. His wife, also a blogger, was injured in the attack, which took place as the couple walked on the campus of Dhaka University.
Mr Roy, a US citizen who was born in Bangladesh, was murdered in February by a gang wielding machetes in an attack in Dhaka. And earlier this month, Niloy Neel was killed by a group of men who snuck into his fourth-floor apartment, again armed with machetes, and beheaded him.
Most secular bloggers have gone into hiding, often using pseudonyms in their posts.
Police were also investigating claims made by a third party that Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent was behind the killings.
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Although Islam is the state religion, Bangladeshi atheists are protected by secular laws based on the common law infrastructure left by the British.
