ICC Note:
A Christian aid worker in Bangladesh is believed to have been murdered by ISIS earlier this week. This is the first attack to be carried out by ISIS in Bangladesh and it has put many in the country on edge. According to reports, the Christian aid worker, Cesare Tavella, was shot and killed by unknown gunmen while out jogging in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka. After the killing, ISIS released a statement taking credit for the murder on a website being monitored by security agencies. Warnings have been issued to foreigners and non-Muslims in Bangladesh about further treats from the Islamic extremist group and many are concerned this murder will not be ISIS’s only attack in Bangladesh.
10/1/2015 Bangladesh (The Tablet) – The death of a Christian aid worker in Bangladesh is the first terrorist atrocity to be carried out in the country by Isis, it is believed.
The terror group confirmed that they shot dead Cesare Tavella in Dhaka while he was out jogging in the diplomatic area of the capital.
Local police said that he appeared to have been ambushed by three men who had pulled to the side of the road on a motorcycle. The men fired at Mr Tavella at least three times before fleeing on the bike.
“We think it was a pre-planned killing,” said Mohammad Abdul Ahad, a Dhaka police official.
According to the SITE Intelligence Group, a UK group which monitors radical Islamic websites, Isis issued a statement after the killing claiming that a “security detachment” had tracked Mr Tavella through the streets of Dhaka and then killed him using “silenced weapons.”
In its statement, Islamic State hinted at more attacks in Bangladesh and said citizens of what it called “the crusader coalition” were not safe, even in the homes of Muslims.
The crusader coalition – a thinly veiled reference to the Crusades in the Middle Ages – is a name coined by Isis to represent all Western democracies.
No arrests had been made, and police officials cautioned that they could not immediately confirm that the Islamic State was behind the shooting.
Security concerns for non-Muslims have escalated since 2010 when Bangladesh’s constitution was returned from an Islamic state back into a secular democracy. A spate of killings of atheist bloggers by Muslim fundamentalists has led to intelligence suggesting that Isis was about to make its first inroads into Bangladesh, which has the fourth largest Muslim population in the world.
At least four bloggers have been killed in the last 18 months, the latest being Niladri Chatterjee, 40, who was hacked to death in his home in Dhaka last month.
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