Mahmuda Khanam left her apartment in Chittagong, Bangladesh, on June 5 to walk her 6-year-old son to a school bus stop. On the way, they were approached by three men who stabbed her repeatedly, then shot her point-blank in the head, leaving her dead on the pavement with the shocked child. The assailants sped away on a motorcycle.
This was not an act of random violence. It was an attack carefully targeted to punish Mahmuda Khanam's husband, Babul Akter, a senior Bangladeshi police official who had been instrumental in several investigations involving militants over the past two years. The method of attack in this case was similar to those that have been used by jihadists in Bangladesh against bloggers, university professors, foreigners and religious minorities. And when the method of attack is combined with Akter's past investigations of jihadist militants, it is not hard to conclude that this was intended as...
