Unknown caller from UK threatens to kill Bangladesh top blogger

Dhaka: Bangladesh's prominent blogger Imran H Sarker, who has launched protests against the killings of the bloggers and minorities in the Muslim-majority country, has received a death threat from an unidentified caller from the UK, a day after a liberal professor was brutally murdered.

"I have been issued a death threat from a number belonging to a code of 'United Kingdom' at 7:12pm on Sunday. It has been said that I will be soon killed," Sarker wrote in a message on his official Facebook page.

"Asked about the identity of the person issuing death threat, he avoided responding to my question. He repeatedly threatened to kill me. Then, he disconnected the phone," said the blogger, who has nearly one million friends on his Facebook page.

Sarker, also the spokesperson of the Shahbag Movement, was threatened last year along with several others, including Dhaka University Vice chancellor.

He led the 2013 protests against Islamist leaders accused of war crimes, prompting authorities to fast-track their trials. He has launched protests against the murders of the bloggers and minorities.

There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners. Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home.

In the latest attack, liberal professor AFM Rezaul Karim Siddiquee, 58, was brutally hacked to death on Saturday by machete-wielding ISIS militants who slit his throat using sharp weapons and left him to die near his home in Rajshahi city.