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08Apr16

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Al Qaeda-Linked Group Claims Bangladesh Killing

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A group affiliated with Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the killing of a liberal Bangladeshi blogger this week, the SITE monitoring service said on Friday, citing a statement posted by the group online.

Ansar al-Islam, the Bangladesh division of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, said its members had carried out the attack as "vengeance" because the blogger Nazimuddin Samad, also known as Mohammad Nazim Uddin, had abused God, the Prophet Muhammad and Islam in Facebook posts.

Reuters was not immediately able to verify the authenticity of the message, but SITE said the group had provided a link to its digital signature to verify the claim.

The 28-year-old was killed in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, on Wednesday by attackers wielding machetes, the latest in series of murders of secular activists by suspected Islamist militants.

The law student was attacked as he was returning from a class at his university, the police said.

"This operation was conducted to teach a lesson to the blasphemers of this land whose poisonous tongues are constantly abusing Allah, the religion of Islam and the Messenger," the group's message in Bengali and English read, according to SITE.

The Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, announced the formation of the affiliate group in 2014 in a video posted online in which he said the group would spread Islamic rule and "raise the flag of jihad" across the Indian subcontinent.

[Source: The New York Times, Reuters, Dubai, 08Apr16]

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This document has been published on 11Apr16 by the Equipo Nizkor and Derechos Human Rights. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.