The killing near the capital's diplomatic zone was the first in a wave of attacks to be claimed by the Islamic State group, and was followed days later by the gunning down of a Japanese farmer in northern Bangladesh.
Bangladesh authorities rejected the IS claim of responsibility, saying the group had no presence in the country.
The government and police say homegrown militants are responsible for the deaths of nearly 50 secular activists, foreigners and religious minorities killed over the last three years.
They say the deaths are part of a plot to destabilize the country, and have blamed the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its Islamist ally.
Deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Sheikh Nazmul Alam said seven people had been charged with the murder of 50-year-old Italian Cesare Tavella, including two BNP officials.
“We submitted the chargesheet against the seven on Monday. Those who are charged include Abdul Quayum who masterminded the attack,” Alam told AFP, referring to a senior BNP official who is believed to be living in exile in Malaysia.
He said the attack was part of a plot “to tarnish the image of the country and destabilize it”.
Quayum denied the charge, telling the Daily Star newspaper he was being victimized because of his political affiliation.
BNP spokesman Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said the charge was “false and politically motivated”.
“It is an attempt to hide the real killers,” Rizvi told AFP.
Bangladesh this month launched a nationwide crackdown on local jihadist groups, arresting more than 11,000 people, under pressure to act on the spate of killings.
But many rights groups allege the arrests were arbitrary or were a way to silence political opponents of the government.
Experts say a government crackdown on opponents, including a ban on the country's largest Islamist party following a protracted political crisis, has pushed many towards extremism.
Dhaka police chief Asaduzzaman Khan said after Tavella's death that his murder was intended to “embarrass the government” and prove the country was unsafe for foreigners.
International schools closed temporarily after the murders and embassies restricted their diplomats' movements, while Australia's cricket team cancelled a planned tour over security concerns.
CRIME
Bangladesh official charged over Italian’s murder
Bangladesh police have charged seven people including a senior opposition official over the murder of an Italian aid worker last September, an officer said on Tuesday
CRIME
Italian court cuts sentences of Americans convicted of killing police officer
An Italian appeal court on Wednesday reduced the decades-long sentences of two American men convicted of killing a police officer in Rome while on a teenage summer holiday in 2019.
Following a retrial ordered by Italy’s highest court that began in March, the Rome appeal court resentenced Finnegan Elder and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth to 15 years and 11 years in prison respectively.
Elder and Natale-Hjorth, from San Francisco, aged 19 and 18 at the time of the killing, were sentenced to life in prison in May 2021 for stabbing policeman Mario Cerciello to death during a late-night encounter.
An appeal court the following year reduced the sentence to 24 years for Elder, who wielded the knife, and 22 years for Natale-Hjorth, who did not handle the weapon but helped hide it.
But Italy’s highest court in March 2023 ordered a retrial to examine potentially mitigating factors, notably that the teenagers said they were unaware that Cerciello and his partner, who were in plain clothes at the time of the attack, were police.
Elder’s lawyers, Renato Borzone and Roberto Capra, said in a statement Wednesday that the court’s decision was “certainly more in line with Finnegan’s actual responsibilities”.
“It is regrettable that we have had to wait through five levels of jurisdiction to see recognised what the young American man has stated since his first interrogation,” they said.
The case horrified Italy and led to an outpouring of public grief for the newlywed Cerciello, who was hailed as a national hero.
But the trial, which revealed multiple examples of police error, offered two very different versions about what happened in the moments just before Elder stabbed Cerciello with an 11-inch (28-centimetre) camping knife on a dark Rome street.
READ ALSO: Italy orders retrial for Americans convicted of killing police officer
While the prosecution’s star witness, Cerciello’s partner Andrea Varriale, testified that the officers were suddenly attacked, the teens said the two men jumped them from behind and did not identify themselves nor show their badges.
The Americans claimed self-defence, saying they thought the men were drug dealers, following their botched attempt to buy drugs earlier in the evening.
Defence lawyers had denounced the life sentences originally given to their clients – Italy’s toughest criminal sentence – saying they were harsher than many given for premeditated killings by the mafia.
The high-profile case also threw a spotlight on police conduct in Italy after Natale-Hjorth was blindfolded while in custody.
The officer who blindfolded him was later handed a two-month suspended sentence.
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