Extremist Farabi Shafiur Rahman had threatened to kill blogger and writer Avijit Roy in a Facebook post last year.
Unidentified miscreants hacked Avijit Roy to death and seriously injured his wife Rafida Ahmed Bonna at the TSC roundabout on Dhaka University campus on Thursday night.
In his Facebook status, posted on February 9, 2014, Farabi alleged the founder of blogging site Muktomona, Avijit Roy, had been distorting Quran and Hadith and circulating those online.
"Avijit Roy lives in America. So it's not possible to kill him now. He will be killed as soon as he returns home," threatened Farabi.
In 2014, online bookstore Rokomari.com stopped selling Avijit’s books after Farabi Shafiur Rahman issued death threats on Facebook to the website’s owner.
In 2013, Farabi was arrested for threatening an Imam with death for administering a burial ceremony for slain blogger Ahmed Rajeeb Haider.
However, Farabi got temporary bail in a case filed against him on August 21, 2013, under the ICT act and attempt to murder case.
Blogger Rajeeb, another active supporter of the Gonojagoron Moncho, was killed in much the same fashion near Shahbagh in Feburary 2013.
Writer Humayun Azad, also a professor of Bangla at Dhaka University, was mercilessly hacked by assailants on February 27, 2004. He too was returning from the book fair on that day and the assailants used machetes just like the attackers did with Avijit and Bonna. Prof Azad later died in Germany but his death is still shrouded in mystery.
