25/04/2026
JUSTICE FOR ZAMIL LIMON AND NAHIDA BRISTY
Both of them are gone. Nahida Bristy’s brother has confirmed her death on Facebook today. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.
Zamil Limon, 27, a doctoral student in geography and environmental science at the University of South Florida, was found dead on the Howard Frankland Bridge over Tampa Bay. Nahida Bristy, 27, a doctoral student in chemical engineering at the same university, a girl who called her family every single day without exception, has now also left this world.
They both disappeared on April 16. They were last seen going about their normal student lives on campus. Within days, their acquaintance Hisham Saleh Abugharbeih, 26, a U.S. citizen, was arrested. He is charged with tampering with evidence, false imprisonment, failure to report a death, and unlawfully moving a dead body. He barricaded himself inside a home when police came. A SWAT team had to drag him out.
Zamil had been working on his doctoral thesis for two years, researching how to use generative AI to protect shrinking wetlands in South Florida. He had plans to come home to Bangladesh this summer to see his family. Nahida was known as a dedicated, brilliant student who never missed a day of contact with her family back home. Until April 16, when the calls stopped forever.
These were the brightest children of this land. They crossed oceans with our collective hopes on their shoulders. They were building futures that would have made Bangladesh proud. And they were robbed of everything.
Now the Bangladesh government must answer a simple question: what are you going to do about it?
Florida is the most aggressive death penalty state in the entire United States. In 2025 alone, Florida carried out 19 executions, the highest in its entire recorded history, accounting for 40% of all executions across the country. The death penalty is not just possible in Hillsborough County, where this crime was committed. It is actively and regularly enforced. The legal framework is right there.
But Florida prosecutors will not automatically seek the maximum punishment for two foreign nationals unless there is sustained, organized, diplomatic pressure. Bangladesh must send the right people, into the right rooms, with the right demands.
Our Foreign Ministry must formally engage with Hillsborough County prosecutors immediately and demand murder charges with the death penalty. Our consulate must be physically on the ground in Tampa, present at every court hearing, standing with these grieving families. Bangladesh must arrange and fund experienced Florida criminal attorneys to represent the victims’ families and ensure the prosecution does not settle for anything less than the maximum sentence. We have full rights under the Vienna Convention to be present and to advocate loudly.
They deserved to finish their PhDs. They deserved to grow old. They deserved to come home.
The american justice system will not grant them highest justice automatically, but we can atleast try for our kids and they must not be forgotten.
