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They just started stabbing them

The wife of one of the men injured in the Dhaka attack October 31st lives in Montreal. Nick Logan at Global News reported her story a few days ago. It includes gut-wrenching photos of him in the hospital.

Monika Mistry said her husband, Tareq Rahim, was hacked multiple times in the head, hands and torso and was shot in the stomach. His condition has improved but he remains in critical condition, with a bullet still inside his body. Mistry’s afraid he could be attacked again.

Rahim, she said, was meeting with writer friends Saturday afternoon in the office of Shuddhashar publishing house, in capital city Dhaka, when a purported group of Islamist extremists stormed in and began hacking them with machetes and cleavers. “They didn’t even talk. They just started stabbing them,” she said.

Mistry had spoken with her husband just four hours before a friend in London, England called her in the middle of the night to let her know about the attack.

She said she feels powerless to be on the other side of the world while her husband is fighting for his life. Mistry, a Bangladeshi who came to Canada in 2006 and now lives in Montreal with her daughter from a previous marriage, said she can’t afford to go back to Bangladesh to be with Rahim.

In a way I’m glad she can’t afford to, because it would be dangerous for her.

Mistry said she wants her 32-year-old husband to be in Canada, where interfaith marriage is more accepted; she’s from a Hindu family, he’s from a Muslim one.

Something of an understatement there. Interfaith marriage is more accepted, secularism is more accepted, not being Hindu or Muslim or any other such label is more accepted.

Mistry fears Rahim’s life will continue to be at risk because he survived the attack and the assailants are waiting to finish the job.

“These killers, they’re on the street. You don’t know, maybe they’re walking around the hospitals because they couldn’t fulfill their mission. They wanted these people dead, but they’re not dead,” she said.

Indeed. You never know. They can burst in anywhere.

The Centre for Inquiry (CFI) Canada, a non-profit education organization, is leading calls for the newly elected Trudeau government to intervene in the case.

“CFI Canada is making an appeal to the Canadian government, and certainly Justin Trudeau, to ask for some compassionate support for someone who would have likely been coming to Canada if they hadn’t been attacked by terrorists before getting a chance to do that,” said Executive Director Eric Adriaans.

Well done CFI Canada.

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