Al-Qaeda affiliate claims responsibility for brutal murder of LGBT magazine editor

Al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Islam have claimed responsibility for the murder of an LGBT magazine editor and his friend in Bangladesh.

Xulhas Mannan was hacked to death after men stormed his home in Dhaka yesterday (April 25). Mannan was a well known gay rights activist who worked at the US embassy and was a senior editor on Roopbaan, the country’s only LGBT magazine.

Fellow activist and friend of Mannan, Tanay Mojumdar, was also killed in the attack.

Now, the BBC reports that Ansar al-Islam, a Bangladeshi affiliate of Islamic extremist group Al Qaeda have claimed they were behind the attack.

The group have written on Twitter that they murdered Mannan and Mojumdar because they were working “to promote homosexuality… with the held of their masters, the US crusaders and their Indian allies”.

The U.S. embassy in Dhaka, where Mannan also worked

The Bangladesh Prime Minister had attempted to blame the killings on the country’s opposition party, members of which were quick to condemn him, alongside national media outlets.

It comes after a Bangladeshi university professor was murdered in a similar fashion on Saturday (April 23), in an attack which was later claimed by ISIS.

ISIS claimed responsibility for murdering Rezaul Karim Siddique, saying he had been executed for “calling to atheism.”

Earlier this month, an atheist activist and blogger Nazimuddin Samad was also murdered by Islamist extremists.

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