Ansarullah Bangla Team chief freed on bail

Mufti Jashimu-ddin Rahmani, chief of the banned militant outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team, was released on bail from Kashimpur High-Security Central Jail in Gazipur yesterday.

Rahmani walked out of the jail around 11:15am, said Deputy Jailer Rezaul Karim.

He was sentenced to five years in jail in 2015 for inciting blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider's murder through his sermons.

Deputy Jailer Md Farhad Sarkar said there were four cases against Rahmani, and he got bail in all of them.

"He [Rahmani] was released as there was no objection from the court and the prison authorities," said Farhad.

Rajib, a blogger and activist of the Gonojagoron Mancha movement, was hacked to death on February 15, 2013, near his home in the capital's Mirpur.

He was the first victim of a series of similar attacks on secular writers and bloggers at that time.

A Dhaka court in the case handed death penalties to two people, life-term imprisonment to another, and five-year imprisonment to Rahmani on December 31, 2015.

The convicts other than Rahmani had vowed to kill "atheist bloggers" after reading Rahmani's books and listening to his sermons, the investigation officer said in the charge sheet. They targeted Rajib "for his blog posts under the pseudonym 'Thabababa'".

Rahmani earlier came out of Kashimpur High-Security Jail on January 21 after securing bail in five cases. He was arrested two days later in connection with another case after police, citing a suspected member of the Al Qaeda-linked group, alleged that Rahmani had started plotting sabotage immediately after his release.