The Bangladeshi prime minister has vowed to hunt down and prosecute those who fatally stabbed two men, including a gay rights activist who also worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, and accused the country’s opposition party and allied militants of orchestrating the attack.
(CBS)- The killings Monday night were the latest in an ongoing wave of attacks claimed by radical Islamists and targeting the country’s outspoken atheists, moderates and foreigners.
The banned group Ansar-al Islam, the Bangladeshi branch of al Qaeda on the Indian subcontinent, claimed responsibility in a Twitter message Tuesday for what it called a “blessed attack.”
It said the two were killed because they were “pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh” and were “working day and night to promote homosexuality … with the help of their masters, the U.S. crusaders and its Indian allies.”
The victims were identified as USAID employee Xulhaz Mannan, who previously worked as a U.S. Embassy protocol officer, and his friend, theater actor Tanay Majumder.
Mannan, a cousin of former Foreign Minister Dipu Moni of the governing party, was also an editor of Bangladesh’s first gay rights magazine, Roopbaan, and Majumder sometimes helped him with the publishing, local media said.