Roundup: Briton among three arrested in connection with Bangladesh blogger killings

Three people, including a British member of an outlawed Islamist group, have been arrested in connection with murders of two bloggers in Bangladesh.

The detainees were identified as Touhidul Islam, mastermind and a financier of the banned Ansarullah Bangla Team, and two of its active members Sadek Ali and Aminul Mollik.

"Three of the suspects are now in our custody," a Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) spokesman told Xinhua Tuesday.

He said the suspects were detained Monday night in the capital of Dhaka.

According to the RAB spokesman who declined to be named, Islam, a Briton of Bangladeshi origin, is the key planner of the killings of blogger Abhijit Roy, an American of Bangladeshi origin, and Ananta Bijoy Das.

Unknown assailants hacked Roy to death in Dhaka on Feb. 26.

A Dhaka Metropolitan Police official said Roy died in a hospital shortly after the miscreants attacked him and his blogger wife Rafida Ahmed Banna at Dhaka University's TSC intersection.

Roy's blogging had reportedly evoked the ire of Islamist fundamentalists and he was regularly threatened.

Another anti-Islamist blogger, Ananta Bijoy, was also hacked to death on May 12 in Sylhet, some 264 km away from the capital.

Bijoy's assassination came just about a month after three men killed blogger Washiqur Rahman Babu near his home in Dhaka in the same fashion on March 30.

Before the wounds due to Babu's murder were recovered, unidentified attackers on Aug. 7 hacked Niloy Chakrabartee, another secular blogger to death in Dhaka, police officials said.

It was the fourth such attack in less than six months in the Muslim-majority country. Endi