Photos: American Blogger Hacked To Death By Islamist Extremists In Bangladesh Has Been Buried

Mourners were today demanding justice for an atheist blogger hacked to death by Islamists in Dhaka over his opposition to religious extremism. Hundreds of mourners gathered around the coffin of Avijit Roy, a U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi origin, after he was murdered in the street last week on his way home from a book fair. His wife and fellow blogger, Rafida Ahmed, remains in hospital in a serious condition after she suffered head injuries and lost a finger in the attack.

The murder of Mr Roy, an atheist who advocated secularism in Bangladesh, came amid a crackdown on the country’s Islamist groups after they increased their activities in recent years. A resident of Atlanta, Georgia, Mr Roy came to visit Dhaka, the city of his birth, in the middle of last month and had been due to soon return home.

Today mourners carried flowers to his coffin at Dhaka University to pay their respects. No arrest has so far been made. People also held a demonstration at the spot where he was killed and chanted slogans demanding ‘immediate arrest and quick trial of the perpetrator’.

Mr Roy’s family said Islamist radicals had threatened him over his blog, ‘Mukto-mona,’ or ‘Freemind,’ that highlighted humanist and rationalist ideas and condemned religious extremism. The naturalised U.S. citizen, who was a bio-engineer as well as a blogger, had been receiving death threats online for years. Mr Roy and his wife have a daughter at university in the U.S.