Former prime minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina rejected the death penalty verdict issued against her by the country’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT). She called the trial “biased and politically motivated.”
Hasina and home minister in her cabinet, Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, were sentenced to death by the ICT in Dhaka on Monday, November 17, finding them guilty of killing protesters during anti-quota agitations in July-August 2024 and crimes against humanity.
A third accused, the then-inspector general of police, Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, was sentenced to five years in prison. The ICT also ordered the confiscation of Hasina and Kamal’s assets and was reportedly seeking their extradition from India, where they are currently living in exile.
Though the Indian government acknowledged the verdict it has not made any clear statement on the topic of extradition so far.
The three-member panel, headed by Justice Golam Mortuza Mzumder found Hasina and Kamal guilty on three counts: inciting crimes through provocative speech, ordering subordinates to commit crimes, and the killing of a student at a university in Rangpur.
Hasina, in a detailed statement released after the verdict, denied all charges against her and rejected the verdict, claiming it was made by “a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate. They are biased and politically motivated.”
On the killings of protesters, Hasina denied it was deliberate, claiming in the process of curbing violence “we lost control of the situation, but to characterize what happened as a premeditated assault on citizens is simply to misread the facts.”
According to various estimates, anywhere between 800 to 1,400 people were killed and thousands of others were injured during the protests in July-August 2024. The months-long protest, led initially by university students in opposition to quotas in government jobs, began in June that year and ended after Hasina resigned from power and left the country on August 5.
Hasina and several of her cabinet colleagues and alliance partners were charged with the killing of protesters and gross human rights violations in hundreds of cases filed against them after the interim government, headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, came to power.
Read More: Political parties in Bangladesh oppose interim government’s changes to the country’s political system
The sentencing on Monday was related to just two of the numerous killing and other “crimes against humanity” cases filed against Hasina and her colleagues.
Political persecution
Hasina claimed that she was denied fair trial by the ICT and challenged the government to bring the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC) if it really wants justice in the matter.
Hasina repeated how under the Yunus-led interim administration she and her party have been facing political persecution.
Hundreds of workers of the Awami League and its allies have been either killed or arrested and party offices, homes of its workers have been attacked with impunity since August 2024. Yunus’ government has also banned all political activities of the Awami League and barred it from contesting the next general elections scheduled to be held in February.
“In this distasteful call for the death penalty, they reveal the brazen and murderous intent of extremist figures within the interim government to remove Bangladesh’s last elected prime minister, and to nullify the Awami League as a political force,” Hasina claimed in her statement.
Hasina was elected as prime minister for the fourth consecutive term in the January 2024 elections. The interim government has termed most of the elections conducted under Hasina’s prime ministership as illegitimate.
Read More: Bangladesh’s interim government bans Awami League from contesting next general elections
Several of Awami League’s alliance partners such as the left groups Workers Party of Bangladesh (WPB) and Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JSD) have also been targeted, with their leaders arrested and their offices vandalized.
Rashad Khan Menon (82), president of the WPB and former minister in Hasina’s government, and Hasanul Haq Inu, leader of the JSD, and communication minister in the last Hasina cabinet have been arrested and put in jail on similar charges as Hasina.
The WPB party office in Dhaka was attacked, allegedly by Yunus supporters, last week and its office secretary was beaten.
Neither just nor fair
Amnesty International called Hasina’s trial “neither fair nor just” and demanded that all those accused of human rights violations and killing of protesters must be tried in a fair and impartial manner if the Bangladesh government is serious about providing justice to the victims.
The UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) expressed its regret at the death penalty verdict against Hasina, questioning her trial because it was conducted in absentia. It hoped that “Bangladesh will move forward with a comprehensive process of truth-telling, reparation and justice as the pathway to national reconciliation and healing.”
Several other international organizations questioned the verdict and demanded a fair trial in the matter.
Sharif Shamshir, a left political activist, told Peoples Dispatch that the verdict was largely on the expected lines given the strong political bias which the present ruling dispensation in Bangladesh has towards the Awami League and its allies.
He criticized the haste with which the verdict was pronounced, claiming it indicates the attempt of the Yunus-led government to prevent the league and its allies from contesting in the upcoming national elections in February.
Shamshir also expressed apprehension that left leaders who were part of the Hasina-led coalition such as Inu and Menon may also face a similar fate as Hasina.
One of the pieces of evidence presented against Hasina for Monday’s sentencing involves a phone conversation with Inu who was the information minister at the time of the July agitation.
“The verdict will satisfy the religious extremists who are seeking to gain political power following Hasina’s exit from power,” Shamshir claims, noting that “most of the working population in the country’s rural and urban areas who are facing growing income inequality and lack of income under the interim administration, however, will be further marginalized.”
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