Bangladeshi jailed for life for attack on prominent novelist

A court in Bangladesh has sentenced a man to life imprisonment for stabbing one of the country’s most renowned authors, who the attacker accused of insulting Islam.

Foyzul Hasan was convicted on Tuesday under “anti-terror” laws over the 2018 attack on science fiction writer and professor Muhammad Zafar Iqbal, who survived the ordeal.

The 28-year-old assailant was caught by students and teachers after stabbing Iqbal in the head and neck at the author’s university campus in the northeastern city of Sylhet.

He later told police that his target was “an enemy of Islam”.

Hasan was not linked with any group but was encouraged to carry out attacks after reading material online, Judge Nurul Amin Biplob said in his verdict.

The judge said Hasan believed a children’s book written by Iqbal mocked and defamed Solomon, one of the Biblical prophets also revered in Islam.

A co-defendant of Hasan’s was sentenced to four years in jail while four others were acquitted, Public Prosecutor Mominur Rahman Titu told AFP news agency.

Iqbal, 69, is a bestselling writer and celebrated secular activist.

The author became a household name through his books that included science fiction, children’s stories, and other fiction and non-fiction, but in recent years he has received criticism, particularly on social media, for his political stands.

He is known for outspoken criticism of religious hardliners and for demanding the leaders of the country’s top Islamist party be put on trial over abuses committed during the country’s 1971 war of independence.

He won the country’s top literary prize, the Bangla Academy Literary Award, in 2004.

Iqbal’s stabbing came after a wave of fatal machete attacks on secular and atheist writers, as well as LGBTQ rights activists.

In March, a court in Bangladesh sentenced four people to death for killing blogger and science writer Ananta Bijoy Das in 2015. Das was known for his critical writings on religions.

Three months earlier, United States-based Bangladeshi blogger Avijit Roy was killed by machete-wielding assailants in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka. Roy had founded a website called Mukto-Mona (Freethinkers) for which Das also used to write.

Bangladesh has launched a nationwide crackdown on violent groups and individuals, killing more than 100 people in raids across the country and arresting more than 1,000 others.