Islamist militant arrested over murder of gay rights activists

Bangladesh police have arrested a homegrown Islamist militant over the murder of two gay rights activists last month in a series of violent attacks that targeted liberal and secular activists in the country.

"We've arrested one man in connection with the murder of Xulhaz Mannan," Dhaka police spokesman Maruf Hossain Sorder told AFP, according to Al-Jazeeera. "He is a member of the Ansarullah Bangla Team."

The arrested suspect is identified as Shariful Islam Shihab, a recent member of Ansarullah Bangla Team and previous member of the banned Islamic militant group Harkatul Jihad. He was reportedly arrested in the southwestern district of Kushita.

His arrest came three weeks after Xulhaz Mannan, editor of the country's first and only magazine for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, and activist Mahbub Tonoy were hacked to death with machetes and guns by six attackers in a Dhaka apartment on April 25.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) as well as a group affiliated with al-Qaeda have claimed responsibility for the killings but Bangladeshi authorities are looking into homegrown militant groups.

Meanwhile, the secular government of Awami League's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed has blamed the opposition party Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its Islamist ally Jamaat-e-Islam for the killings, accusing them of destabilizing the country.

"Everybody knows who were behind such killings. The BNP-Jamaat nexus has been engaged in such secret and heinous murders to destabilize the country," she said during a meeting of Awami League nomination board at her official residence Ganobhaban last month, according to the Daily Observer.

The police said they have already identified five of the attackers from a video footage in the nearby buildings.

"We are checking the footage to determine whether Shihab is visible there," Munirul Islam, head of the newly created police counterterrorism unit, said in a news conference on Sunday, May 15.

Four secular bloggers and a publisher were also hacked to death last year. Since the beginning of April, there has been a series of similar killings, one of which involved a Buddhist monk whose body was found inside a temple this weekend.