Bangladesh opens trial of deposed ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
A special tribunal set up to try Bangladesh's ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina began proceedings Sunday by accepting the charges against humanity filed against her in connection with a mass uprising in which hundreds of students were killed last year.
Accepting the charges, the Dhaka-based International Crimes Tribunal directed investigators to produce Hasina, a former home minister and a former police chief before the court on June 16.
Hasina has been in exile in India since Aug. 5, 2023, while former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan is missing and possibly also was in India. Former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al Mamun has been arrested. Bangladesh sent a formal request to India to extradite Hasina in December.
State-run Bangladesh Television broadcast the court proceedings live.
In an investigation report submitted on May 12, the tribunal's investigators brought five allegations of crimes against humanity against Hasina and two others during the mass uprising in July-August last year.
According to the charges, Hasina was directly responsible for ordering all state forces, her Awami League party and its associates to carry out actions that led to mass killings, injuries, targeted violence against women and children, the incineration of bodies, and denial of medical treatment to the wounded.
Three days after Hasina's ouster, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus took over as the nation's interim leader.
In February, the U.N. human rights office estimated that up to 1,400 people may have been killed in Bangladesh over three weeks in the crackdown on the student-led protests against Hasina, who ruled the country for 15 years.
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