The International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh (ICT) sentenced this Monday death penalty to the former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina for considering her guilty of crimes against humanity during the violent repression of the student protests that took place in 2024 and that forced his resignation and exile.
“The accused Sheikh Hasina committed crimes against humanity,” said Judge Golam Mortuza Mozumder, according to the live broadcast of Bangladesh television network BTV. The court has claimed to have found evidence that the former president had given the direct order to use force to repress the mobilizations.
Hasina remains exiled in India since his resignation following the protests, in which about 1,500 people diedaccording to a report published by the United Nations. The former president denounced that her sentence responds to “political persecution” directed by the interim government of Muhammad Yunus, which has already requested extradition from New Delhi.
Riots in Bangladesh after the death sentence of the former prime minister.
Reuters
The ruling marks the most drastic legal action against a former Bangladeshi leader in decades and comes few months before the parliamentary elections scheduled for early February. Hasina’s party, the Awami League, is prohibited from running in these elections.
The ICT was surrounded by strong security controls, including Bangladeshi Army troopsafter on Sunday the Supreme Court of Bangladesh requested its deployment around the court that is trying the former president.
Bangladesh’s ICT is a domestic court established in 2009 to investigate and prosecute people accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and other crimes under international law. In June, he filed charges against Hasina through the Prosecutor’s Office.
Torture and humiliation
After reading the sentence, There were cheers and applause in the room.. The ruling can be appealed to the Supreme Court, although Hasina’s son has told Reuters that an appeal is not expected unless the new democratic government that takes power has the participation of the Awami League.
Hasina, who had rejected the accusations and denounced the impartiality of the judicial process, was represented by a court-appointed lawyer. The former president, after hearing the ruling, stated that the sentence was based on “political motivations”. “We lost control of the situation but what happened cannot be defined as a premeditated assault on citizens,” he defended.
Members of the Bangladeshi Army in front of the court that tried Hasina.
Reuters
According to the Bangladeshi Prosecutor’s Office, more than 1,500 people died in the mass protests of 2024, more than 25,000 were injured and an unknown number were subjected to torture and humiliation during the uprising by the authorities led by Hasina.
The protests, initially led by a group of students against a controversial employment quota system intended for descendants of former combatants during the 1971 war of independence, they were initially peaceful, but were soon harshly repressed by the forces commanded by Hasina
The then prime minister resigned on August 5 and fled to India, where she has remained since then, although her exact whereabouts in this country are unknown.