In a significant judicial development in Dhaka, Bangladesh, proceedings have commenced against the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is facing charges of crimes against humanity. This follows a tragic student uprising that resulted in hundreds of deaths last year. The charges are being handled by a specially formed International Crimes Tribunal based in Dhaka. On Sunday, the tribunal accepted the charges and instructed investigators to present Hasina, the former home minister, and a former police chief to the court on June 16.
Following her removal from office, Hasina has been living in exile in India since August 2024. Meanwhile, former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan’s whereabouts remain unknown, although it is speculated he is also in India, while former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al Mamun has already been detained. In December, Bangladesh formally requested India to extradite Hasina. State-run Bangladesh Television provided live coverage of the court process.
Hasina, along with her political party, the Awami League, previously criticized the tribunal, alleging political bias, particularly connections with the Jamaat-e-Islami party. The tribunal’s investigative team, in their report submitted on May 12, raised five allegations against Hasina concerning her involvement in the mass uprising. The charges accuse Hasina of orchestrating the use of state forces, her political party, and affiliates in acts that resulted in mass fatalities, injuries, targeted aggression against women and children, burning of bodies, and denying medical aid to injured individuals.
She is portrayed in these charges as the primary architect and overseer of these heinous acts. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus assumed the role of interim leader shortly after Hasina’s ousting. Yunus’s government, which has proscribed the Awami League, amended pertinent laws to facilitate the trial of the party for its involvement in the events of the uprising.
The United Nations human rights office disclosed in February that as many as 1,400 individuals might have died over a span of three weeks in the clampdown on the student-initiated protests against Hasina, who had a 15-year rule over Bangladesh. Initially set up by Hasina in 2009, the tribunal was intended to prosecute crimes related to Bangladesh’s independence war of 1971. Under Hasina, this tribunal had functioned to try politicians predominantly from the Jamaat-e-Islami party, for their wartime activities during the country’s fight for independence from Pakistan.
In a separate development, on Sunday, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court facilitated the way for the Jamaat-e-Islami party to retrieve its status as a registered political entity after ten years. This legal allowance paves the way for the party to participate in future elections. Overturning an earlier High Court decision, the Supreme Court ruled it is now the Election Commission’s responsibility to officially reinstate the Jamaat-e-Islami’s registration and their election symbol.
Interim leader Yunus announced plans to hold elections by June next year; however, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and long-standing rival of Hasina, advocates for elections in December of this year. Tensions have mounted between Zia’s party and the currently Yunus-led administration over these election timetables, considering Zia’s party has become the largest opposition faction in the absence of Hasina’s party.