Mohammad Yunus was a Bangladeshi academic and Professor of economics at the University of Rajshahi. He was assassinated on 24 December 2004 by the Islamist terrorist organization Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh. [1] [2] He was one of four professors assassinated at Rajshahi University. [3]
Yunus was a professor of economics at the University of Rajshahi. He was the president of Bangabandhu Parishad of Rajshahi. He was the vice president of Bangladesh Economic Association. He was the former registrar of Rajshahi University. He was politically liberal and left leaning. [4] [5]
As the registrar of Rajshahi University he served[ citation needed ] a show cause notice to Muhammad Asadullah Al-Ghalib, an Islamist and professor of Rajshahi University. [6]
Yunus was killed in Binodpur, Rajshahi City while on his morning walk on 24 December 2004. [7]
Shahidullah aka Mahbub and Safiullah were charged with the murder along with 6 others by Criminal Investigation Department of Bangladesh Police. Safiullah was arrested on 13 April 2006. He confessed to the police and claimed the killings were carried on the orders of Shaykh Abdur Rahman, the head of Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh. Shahidullah was arrested soon after from Bogra. He was the son-in-law of Rafiqul Islam, older brother of Siddikur Rahman alias Bangla Bhai, the military head of Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh. [7] The Criminal Investigation Department filed charges on 10 September 2007. [8]
In 2009 the case was moved to the speedy trial tribunal. The convicts appealed the verdict at Bangladesh High Court which the High Court granted. The tribunal sentenced two of the accused to death and acquitted 6 other accused in 2010. At a retrial, Justice Golam Ahmed Khalilul of Rajshahi Speedy Trial Tribunal reduced the sentence of the two convicts, Shahidullah and Safiullah, to life imprisonment on 24 February 2016. [7] [9] [10] [11]
Siddique ul-Islam, known popularly as Bangla Bhai, also known as Jawad uddin attariAzizur Rôhman, was a Bangladeshi terrorist and the military commander of the Al Qaeda affiliated radical Islamist organization Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, known in popular usage as the JMJB. Most active in the north-western section of Bangladesh around the Rajshahi region, Bangla Bhai gained a nationwide and worldwide notoriety for bombings and other terrorist activities.
The University of Rajshahi, also known as Rajshahi University or RU, is a public research university located in Motihar, Rajshahi, Bangladesh. It is the second oldest and third largest university in Bangladesh. The university's 59 departments are organized into 12 faculties. It is one of the four autonomous by the act (1973) of Bangladesh.
Muhammad Shahidullah was a Bengali linguist, philologist, educationist, and writer.
Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, is an Islamist extremist group operating in and around northwestern Bangladesh. The Government of Bangladesh has banned the JMJB, classifying it as a terrorist organization. It is described by Bangladeshi police as an offshoot of the related Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh outfit.
On 17 August 2005, around 500 bomb explosions occurred at 300 locations in 63 out of the 64 districts of Bangladesh. The bombs exploded within a half-hour period starting from 11:30 am. A terrorist organization, Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) claimed responsibility for the bombings. The group, led by Shaykh Abdur Rahman and Siddiqur Rahman. Another terrorist group, named Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, was associated with JMB in executing the co-ordinated attack. Following the bombings, both groups were banned by the BNP Government of Bangladesh.
Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen is a terrorist organisation operating in Bangladesh. It is listed as a terror group by Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, The United Kingdom and Australia. It was founded in April 1998 in Palampur in Dhaka Division by Abdur Rahman and gained public prominence in 2001 when bombs and documents detailing the activities of the organisation were discovered in Parbatipur in Dinajpur district. The organisation was officially declared a terrorist organisation and banned by the government of Bangladesh in February 2005 after attacks on NGOs. But it struck back in mid-August when it detonated 500 small bombs at 300 locations throughout Bangladesh. The group re-organised and has committed several public murders in 2016 in northern Bangladesh as part of a wave of attacks on secularists.
Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed was a Bangladeshi politician who served as a Member of Parliament and as the Minister of Social Welfare from 2001 to 2007. He was executed in 2015 for war crimes committed during the 1971 Liberation war of Bangladesh.
In 1971, the Pakistan Army and their local collaborators, most notably the extreme right wing militia group Al-Badr, engaged in the systematic execution of Bengali intellectuals during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. Bengali intellectuals were abducted, tortured and killed during the entire duration of the war as part of the 1971 Bangladesh genocide. However, the largest number of systematic executions took place on 25 March and 14 December 1971, two dates that bookend the conflict. 14 December is commemorated in Bangladesh as Martyred Intellectuals Day.
Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, previously known as Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, or Jamaat for short, is the largest Islamist political party in Bangladesh. On 1 August 2013, the Bangladesh Supreme Court cancelled the registration of the Jamaat-e-Islami, ruling that the party is unfit to contest national elections.
Ashrafuz Zaman Khan is a Pakistani Bengali American who is one of the convicted masterminds of 1971 killing of Bengali intellectuals. In 1971, he was a member of the Central Committee of the Islami Chhatra Sangha. After liberation he went to Pakistan and worked for Radio Pakistan. Later, he moved to New York and presently heads the Queens branch of Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). He was sentenced to death in absentia by the International War Crimes Tribunal for killing 18 Bengali intellectuals during the last days of the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh.
Bangladesh has experienced terrorism in the past conducted by a number of different organisations. In the past, both ISIL and other terrorist organisations had claimed to be active in the country. However, the Bangladeshi government believes that they mainly operated through local affiliates, before being neutralised by security forces.
Attacks by Islamic extremists in Bangladesh took place during a period of turbulence in Bangladesh between 2013 and 2016 when a number of secularist and atheist writers, bloggers, and publishers in Bangladesh; foreigners; homosexuals; and religious minorities such as Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Ahmadis who were seen as having offended Islam and Muhammad were attacked in retaliation, with many killed by Muslim extremists. By 2 July 2016, a total of 48 people, including 20 foreign nationals, had been killed in such attacks. These attacks were largely blamed on extremist groups such as Ansarullah Bangla Team and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The Bangladeshi government was criticized for its response to the attacks, which included charging and jailing some of the secularist bloggers for allegedly defaming some religious groups; or hurting the religious sentiments of different religious groups; or urging the bloggers to flee overseas. This strategy was seen by some as pandering to hard line elements within Bangladesh's Muslim majority population. About 89% of the population in Bangladesh is Sunni Muslim. The government's eventual crackdown in June 2016 was also criticized for its heavy-handedness, as more than 11,000 people were arrested in a little more than a week.
A. F. M. Rezaul Karim Siddique was a professor of English at Rajshahi University, Bangladesh. He died in an attack suspected to have been carried out by Islamist militants that has been linked by commentators to a wave of attacks on secularists in Bangladesh.
2005 Jhalakathi bombing was a bombing of a car transporting judges to the District Court of Jhalakathi. Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) claimed responsibility for the bombings. The group, led by Shaykh Abdur Rahman and Siddiqur Rahman.
Aminul Haque was a Bangladesh Nationalist Party politician who served as the Bangladesh Minister of Post and Telecommunications. A member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), he represented Rajshahi-1 as a member of parliament from 1991 to 2006.
The 2005 Netrokona bombing was a suicide bomb attack on 8 December 2005 in Netrokona, Bangladesh that resulted in the deaths of eight people. It took place mid-morning outside the offices of Bangladesh Udichi Shilpigoshthi, a secular cultural organisation.
Islamic State – Bengal Province (IS-BP) is an administrative division of the Islamic State, a Salafi jihadist militant group and former unrecognised Quasi-state. The group was announced by ISIL as its province in 2016. The first emir of Wilayat al-Bengal, Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif, is believed to be Mohammad Saifullah Ozaki a Bangladeshi Japanese economist who went to Syria in 2015 and joined IS. A Hindu convert to Islam, he reportedly led the 2016 Dhaka attack. He was detained in Iraq in 2019 and Abu Muhammed al-Bengali was announced as the new emir of the province.
Syed Taher Ahmed was a professor of geology and mining at the University of Rajshahi in Bangladesh who was missing on 1 February 2006 and was found dead two days later. Ahmed, aged 58, was a senior member of the planning committee that evaluates application of teachers for promotion. In 2005, his junior colleague and once a close friend, Mia Mohammad Mohiuddin, applied for promotion to full professor. Ahmed discovered inconsistencies in the application; Mohiuddin had not served the required 12-year-academic service, and more critically, had plagiarised and pirated ten of the eleven research papers he submitted. Mohiuddin's fate was to be decided by the planning committee on 2 February 2006. With his career was at stake, Mohiuddin hired Jahangir Alam, caretaker of the university's quarters. Alam, assisted by his brother Abdus Salam and brother-in-law Nazmul, killed Ahmed in the night of 1 February 2006.
Murder of A. K. M. Shafiul Islam refers to the murder of University of Rajshahi professor A. K. M. Shafiul Islam. He was known to be a progressive and fan of lalon music. He was one of four teachers of the University killed in the last two decades.
Mohammad Anwar Latif Khan is a Bangladesh Army Colonel and the Sector Commander of Border Guards Bangladesh in Rajshahi. He is the former Additional Director General (Operations) at the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) an elite multi-service unit of the Bangladesh Police and oversaw crackdowns on Islamist militants. He has been sanctioned by the United States for his activities in RAB. He had previously commanded RAB-5, RAB-7, and RAB-11.