Protesters storm offices of leading Bangladesh dailies after a 2024 uprising activist dies

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Angry protesters stormed the offices of Bangladesh’s two leading newspapers late Thursday after the death of a prominent activist in last year’s political uprising in Bangladesh. The crowds set fire to the buildings of the dailies, trapping journalists and other staff inside.

Hours later, the journalists and other staff were evacuated, and the fires were brought under control early Friday.

It was not clear why the protesters attacked the newspapers whose editors are known to be closely connected with the country’s interim leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus. Protests were organized in recent months outside the offices of the dailies by Islamists who blamed the newspapers for their alleged link with India.

Sharif Osman Hadi, a spokesperson for the Inqilab Moncho culture group, died in hospital in Singapore early Thursday evening after a weeklong battle for his life.

He was shot on the streets of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, last Friday while riding on a rickshaw. Two men on a motorbike followed Hadi and one shot him before they fled the scene. After days of treatment in Dhaka, Hadi was flown to Singapore in critical condition.

Authorities have said they identified the suspects and that the shooter had most probably fled to India — remarks that sparked a new diplomatic squabble with India and prompted New Delhi this week to summon Bangladesh's envoy to express its condemnation. Bangladesh also summoned the Indian envoy to Dhaka and sought clarification.

Hadi was a fierce critic of both neighboring India and former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, whose 15-year rule of Bangladesh ended in last year's uprising.

The Inqilab Moncho group, formed after the ouster of Hasina last year, has been organizing street protests and campaigns denouncing Hasina and India. The country's Islamists and other Hasina opponents have blamed her government for being subservient to India during her rule.

Hadi had planned to run as an independent candidate in a major constituency in Dhaka in the next national elections which the country's interim government has announced for February.

Since Hasina's ouster, the Inqilab Moncho group has promoted anti-Indian sentiment in the Muslim-majority country. Hasina now lives in self-imposed exile in India.

Witnesses and media reports said hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Dhaka immediately after the news of Hadi's death, rallying on Shahbagh Square near the Dhaka University campus where many chanted slogans such as Allahu Akbar, or God is great in Arabic. There were also similar protests elsewhere in the country.

Later, a group of protesters gathered outside the head office of the country’s leading Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily in Dhaka’s Karwan Bazar area. They then surged into the building, vandalized it and set fire to it, according to online portals of various leading media outlets.

A few hundred yards away, another group of protesters pushed into the premises of the country’s leading English-language Daily Star and set fire to the building, according to footage from Kaler Kantha, another mainstream newspaper.

Soldiers and paramilitary border guards deployed outside the two buildings but did not take any action to disperse the protesters. Security officials tried to convince them to leave peacefully as firefighters arrived at the scene outside the Daily Star building.

The blaze trapped the newspaper's staff working inside the building late Thursday. One of the Daily Star's journalists, Zyma Islam, wrote on Facebook that she was inside the building.

“I can't breathe anymore. There's too much smoke," she said.

By early Friday, the fire was brought under control.

Both dailies stopped updating their online editions after the attacks and they did not publish broadsheets on Friday.

The protesters Thursday night also targeted Chhayanaut, a leading cultural institution widely respected by liberals, in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi neighborhood.

Dozens of protesters were still at Shahbagh Friday morning and vowed to continue the protests.

Hadi's body would be brought to Dhaka from Singapore on Friday evening, authorities said.

The attack on Hadi is still being investigated, but the shooting has set off tensions. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have recently expressed concerns over violations of human rights in Bangladesh.

Yunus, who took over three days after Hasina’s ouster in August 2024, promised in a televised address to the nation late Thursday to punish Hadi's killers.

He announced that Saturday would be a day of mourning and urged the citizens to stay calm.

Yunus' critics and Hasina's former Awami League party have blamed the interim government for the rise of Islamists in Bangladesh, a parliamentary democracy with a history of political violence.

The interim government has banned all activities by Hasina's party, including its running in the February election. Last month, a Bangladesh court sentenced Hasina to death on charges of crimes against humanity involving the uprising.

On Wednesday, anti-India protesters attempted to march toward the Indian High Commission in Dhaka, prompting it to close its visa section. After Hasina's ouster India stopped issuing tourist visas to Bangladeshis, citing security concerns, but continued giving visas for medical treatment in India.

On Thursday, protesters in the southwestern city of Rajshahi tried to march toward the office of a regional Indian diplomat. Police stopped both marches.

A protester reacts to the camera near the premises of the Prothom Alo daily newspaper which was set on fire by angry protesters after news reached the country from Singapore of the death of a prominent activist Sharif Osman Hadi, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)

Bangladesh army stands guard at the premises of the Prothom Alo daily newspaper after angry protesters set it on fire after news reached the country from Singapore of the death of a prominent activist Sharif Osman Hadi, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)

A fire engine arrives at the premises of The Daily Star newspaper after angry protesters set it on fire after news reached the country from Singapore of the death of a prominent activist Sharif Osman Hadi, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)

A girl rescues books from a shop near the premises of the Prothom Alo daily newspaper which was set on fire by angry protesters after news reached the country from Singapore of the death of a prominent activist Sharif Osman Hadi, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)

Protesters shout slogans in front of the premises of the Prothom Alo daily newspaper after news reached the country from Singapore of the death of a prominent activist Sharif Osman Hadi, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)

A man suspected in the fatal shootings at Brown University and of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor outside Boston has been found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility after a five-day search that spanned several New England states, authorities said Thursday,

Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief. Perez said as far as investigators know, the suspect acted alone.

Investigators believe Neves Valente is responsible for both the shooting at Brown and the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor two days later at his Brookline home, nearly 50 miles (80 kilometers) away, U.S. attorney for Massachusetts Leah B. Foley said.

Two students were killed and nine were wounded in the mass shooting Saturday in a Brown University lecture hall. The investigation had shifted Thursday when authorities said they were looking into a connection between the Brown attack and the fatal shooting of 47-year-old MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro.

Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001. He was admitted to the graduate school to study physics beginning in September 2000. “He has no current affiliation with the university,” she said.

Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, Foley said. Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page. The same year, Neves Valente was was let go from a position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school’s then-president in February 2000.

Neves Valente had studied at Brown on an F1 visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent residence status in September 2017, Foley said. His last known residence was in Miami.

President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that at Trump’s direction she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program. The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the United States, many of them in Africa.

“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Noem said in a post on the social platform X.

The FBI previously said it knew of no links between the two shootings.

Police credited a Brown University custodian who had several encounters with Neves Valente as providing the crucial tip that led to the shooting suspect.

“When you do crack it, you crack it. And that person led us to the car, which led us to the name,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said.

After police shared images of a person of interest, the janitor recognized him and posted his suspicions on social media forum Reddit, where he was a regular commenter. Other Reddit users urged him tell the FBI, and the witness said he did.

But it took days before police say they interviewed him after publicizing a video where Neves Valente appeared to run away from the other man. The Reddit commenter didn’t respond to questions from The Associated Press earlier week but returned to the forum on Wednesday night to say that he was just interviewed by investigators.

“Respectfully, I have said all I have to say on the matter to the right people,” the Reddit commenter wrote Wednesday night, adding hope that the person of interest “is apprehended soon so the authorities can get to the bottom of this.”

His tip gave investigators a key detail: a Nissan sedan with Florida plates. That enabled Providence police officers to tap into a network of more than 70 street cameras operated around the city by surveillance company Flock Safety. Those cameras track license plates and other vehicle details.

After leaving Rhode Island for Massachusetts, Providence officials said the suspect stuck a Maine license plate over the rental car’s plate to help conceal his identity.

Video footage showed Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro's. About an hour later, he was seen entering the storage facility where he was found dead, Foley said.

There are still “a lot of unknowns” in regard to motive, Neronha said. “We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom,” he said.

Frustration had mounted in Providence that the person behind the attack managed to get away and that a clear image of their face hadn’t emerged.

Although Brown officials say there are 1,200 cameras on campus, the attack happened in an older part of the engineering building that has few, if any, cameras. And investigators believe the shooter entered and left through a door that faces a residential street bordering campus, which might explain why the cameras Brown does have didn’t capture footage of the person.

In such targeted and highly public attacks, the shooters typically kill themselves or are killed or arrested by police, said Katherine Schweit, a retired FBI agent and expert on mass shootings. When they do get away, searches can take time.

In the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, it took investigators four days to catch up to the two brothers who carried it out. In a 2023 case, Army reservist Robert Card was found dead of an apparent suicide two days after he killed 18 people and wounded 13 others in Lewiston, Maine.

The man accused of killing conservative political figure Charlie Kirk in September turned himself in about a day and a half after the attack on Utah Valley University's campus. And Luigi Mangione, who has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan last year, was arrested five days later at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania.

This story was updated to delete a reference to MIT being an Ivy League school.

Richer and Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City, Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed reporting.

People gather outside a storage facility where a suspect in the shooting at Brown University was found dead, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Salem, N.H. (AP Photo/Reba Saldanha)

Law enforcement officers are seen outside a storage facility where a suspect in the shooting at Brown University was found dead, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Salem, N.H. (AP Photo/Reba Saldanha)

Law enforcement officers search the area for the Brown University shooting suspect, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Salem, N.H. (AP Photo/Reba Saldanha)

A pedestrian walks along Brown University's campus on Thayer St. in Providence, R.I., Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025. (Lily Speredelozzi/The Sun Chronicle via AP)

This image taken from video provided by the FBI shows a person of interest in the investigation of the shooting that occurred at Brown University, in Providence, R.I., Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (FBI via AP)

A poster seeking information about the campus shooting suspect is seen on the campus of Brown University, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

A woman lights a candle at a memorial set up in front of the Barus and Holley engineering building at Brown University in Providence, RI, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/ Mark Stockwell)

A Brown University student walks past a church on the Providence, RI, campus, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/ Mark Stockwell)