Updated

A Bangladesh court has sentenced five members of a banned militant group to death for their involvement in the slaying of a Japanese agricultural researcher two years ago.

Judge Noresh Chandra Sarker on Tuesday acquitted a sixth defendant belonging to the militant group, Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh.

Three masked men riding on a motorbike shot and killed Kunio Hoshi while he was riding in a rickshaw to his grass farm in Rangpur, a northern Bangladesh city in October 2015.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, but Bangladesh authorities blamed it on the domestic group.

Bangladesh has experienced a renewed level of Islamic militancy in recent years. Dozens of atheists, liberal writers, bloggers and publishers and members of minority communities and foreigners have been targeted and killed.