Five students have been arrested in Dhaka in the murder of the atheist blogger and campaigner Ahmed Rajib Haidar. The police say all five confessed to involvement in the murder.

The detectives identified the five as Faisal bin Nayeem alias Dwip, 22, Maksudul Hassan Anik, 23, Ehsan Reza Rumman, 23, Naim Sikder Irad, 19, and Nafis Imtiaz, 22.

Dwip and Anik, who hail from Matuail and Keraniganj in Dhaka, are students of electrical and electronic engineering, while Rumman and Irad, who hail from Jhenidah and Brahmanbaria respectively, are students of electric and telecommunications.

Imtiaz, who hails from Sandwip in Chittagong, is a student of business administration.

Notice all the high tech. I mentioned this to Tasneem Khalil, who sent me the link, and he told me that Islamists recruit the brightest in high tech and finance.

Makes sense. They would, wouldn’t they. But notice how brightness of that instrumental kind can be compatible with moral idiocy. From Islamists to bankers, murderers to technocrats in charge of genocidal wars (I’m thinking of Halberstam’s Best and Brightest here), one kind of brightness does not necessarily imply or include another kind.

The “Borobhai” [senior brother; the mastermind] gave the NSU students links of some blogs and asked them to collect information about the bloggers.

Analysing the posts, the group decided to kill Rajib, who used to write under the pseudonym of “Thaba Baba”, Monirul Islam, the DMP joint commissioner, told the newspersons.

Once the decision was taken, an “intelligence group” was formed to collect detailed information about the blogger analysing his posts on blogs and Facebook, and track him down.

An “intelligence group” with no moral intelligence whatever.

On February 11, Rumman followed their target from Shahbagh Projonmo Chattar to Mirpur-10 intersection. “Rajib was in a bus and Rumman followed him by a bicycle,” said the police official.

Rumman failed to find out Rajib’s house that day. But the next day he succeeded to locate his place at Palashnagar.

“The group later started to collect information from locals regarding his profession, lifestyle, relatives, etc to finalise their killing plan,” said Monirul.

Anik and a couple of others went to Notun Bazar and bought machetes and knives. Anik paid the money, the arrestees said.

On the day of the killing, the group came to know from Rajib’s Facebook page that he would not go to Shahbagh that day and rushed hurriedly to Palashnagar by bicycles and bus, said Monirul.

They reached there around 4:00pm, carrying the machetes and knives in schoolbags.

The group started to play cricket in an alley near the blogger’s house to monitor his return.

As the sun was going down, Rajib was seen returning home. When he neared the gate of his house, Dwip hit him with a machete in a bid to sever his head from the shoulder, but failed to succeed in doing so.

After two more hits, the victim fell on the wall and Dwip continued to chop him, said Monirul.

Why? Because. He was an atheist. What more reason did they need?

“Three of them told us that they were not repentant for what they have done. They said it was their religious obligation to kill Rajib.”

No thinking involved. Just a made-up rule, and stupidly blindly following it, without thinking. Your superior officer tells you to kill everyone in the village, you do it. Your “superior brother” tells you to kill an atheist blogger, you do it.