Bangladesh authorities arrest man over atheist blogger's murder

[cbayer]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/02/bangladesh-authorities-arrest-man-atheist-bloggers-murder-avijit-roy

Police say Islamist blogger Farabi Shafiur Rahman is the prime suspect in the death of US man Avijit Roy, who was hacked to death with a machete in Dhaka


Members of Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion force escort Farabi Shafiur Rahman. Photograph: Suvra Kanti Das/AP

Agence France-Presse in Dhaka
Monday 2 March 2015 10.47 GMT Last modified on Monday 2 March 2015 13.47 GMT

Bangladeshi authorities have arrested a radical Islamist over the murder last week of an atheist US blogger, accusing him of being behind earlier death threats on social media.

A spokesman for the police’s elite Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) said Farabi Shafiur Rahman had been arrested at a bus station in the capital, Dhaka, over the gruesome killing of Avijit Roy. “He is the main suspect,” Rab spokesman Major Maksudul Alam said.

“He is a fundamentalist blogger,” the spokesman said, adding that according to “primary information” Farabi had threatened Roy through Twitter and Facebook. “[Roy’s] family told us that he got threats from Farabi several times,” he added.

The American, who earned fame for his blog pieces and for authoring a series of books including the best-selling The Virus of the Faith, was hacked to death with a machete in Dhaka last Thursday.

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[trotsky]

1. The pope on the matter of violent responses to religious criticism:

“It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2015/01/15/pope-francis-on-charlie-hebdo-you-cannot-insult-the-faith-of-others/