Sheikh Hasina, the ousted former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, has been sentenced to death by a special tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity in relation to the fatal crackdown on a student uprising last year that led to the end of her 15-year rule.
The violence is estimated by the United Nations to have killed up to 1,400 people, after deadly force was used against the protesters.
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Hasina is currently in exile in India, as is former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, who was also sentenced to death on Monday for his involvement in last year’s event. India did not respond to requests by Bangladesh to extradite Hasina and Khan to face trial.
“Sheikh Hasina was the mastermind, the planner, order-giver, and superior commander or highest order-giver, of all crimes against humanity committed during the July uprising,” read the verdict handed down by the Office of the Chief Prosecutor of the International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka, Bangladesh, according to BBC Bangla. The verdict was broadcast live in Bangladesh.
Hasina has condemned the ruling.
“We lost control of the situation, but to characterize what happened as a premeditated assault on citizens is simply to misread the facts,” she said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.
Hasina’s Awami League party called for a nationwide shutdown by way of protesting the verdict.
The 2024 protests began after the government reinstated a policy that reserved 30% of government jobs for relatives of veterans from the country’s war of independence. The way in which the government responded to the protests, and the loss of life that occurred, has been widely criticized.
“The brutal response was a calculated and well-coordinated strategy by the former Government to hold onto power in the face of mass opposition,” said U.N. Human Rights Chief Volker Türk in February.
Türk maintained there were reasonable grounds to believe that “hundreds of extrajudicial killings, extensive arbitrary arrests and detentions, and torture, were carried out with the knowledge, coordination and direction of the political leadership.”
Bangladesh is currently under the governance of an interim body led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, who took over days after Hasina’s fall in August 2024.
The interim force called for order in response to the verdict as disorder broke out in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, particularly outside Hasina’s father’s home-turned-museum. Police were dispatched to regain control of the fraught scene. Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s first President.
“Realizing the profound significance of this verdict, the interim government calls on people from all walks of life to remain calm, restrained, and responsible,” urged the government.
The death sentence ruling can be appealed in the Supreme Court. However, Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed is quoted as telling Reuters ahead of the verdict that they would not appeal unless a democratically-elected government took office with the Awami League’s participation.
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