Bangladesh ex-PM Hasina charged with ‘systematic attack' as trial opens

Al Jazeera

2 days ago

Fugitive former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina orchestrated a 'systematic attack' on protests against her government, Bangladeshi prosecutors have said at the opening of her trial over last year's deadly crackdown.
'Upon scrutinising the evidence, we reached the conclusion that it was a coordinated, widespread and systematic attack,' Mohammad Tajul Islam, chief prosecutor at Bangladesh's domestic International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), told the court in his opening speech on Sunday.
'The accused unleashed all law enforcement agencies and her armed party members to crush the uprising,' Islam said as he charged the 77-year-old former leader and two other officials of 'abetment, incitement, complicity, facilitation, conspiracy, and failure to prevent mass murder' during the student-led mass uprising.
The United Nations says nearly 1,400 Bangladeshis were killed between July and August 2024 when Hasina's government launched a brutal campaign to silence the protesters. Bangladesh has charged her with crimes against humanity over the killings.
Hasina – who remains in self-imposed exile in neighbouring India, her old ally – has rejected the charges as politically motivated.
She fled by helicopter to New Delhi in August last year after the nationwide protests ended her 'autocratic' 15-year rule marked by allegations of repeated human rights violations, including attacks, imprisonment, and even targeted killings of opposition figures, dissenters, and critics.
She has since defied an arrest warrant and extradition order to return to Dhaka.
The ICT is also prosecuting former senior figures connected to the ousted government of Hasina and her now-banned Awami League party, including former Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun.
Their prosecution has been a key demand of several political parties now jostling for power. The interim government has promised to hold elections before June 2026.
Prosecutors submitted their report in the case against Hasina last month, with the court expected to issue formal charges on Sunday.
ICT chief prosecutor Tajul Islam said on May 12 that Hasina faces at least five charges, including 'abetment, incitement, complicity, facilitation, conspiracy and failure to prevent mass murder during the July uprising'.
Investigators have collected video footage, audio clips, Hasina's phone conversations, records of helicopter and drone movements, as well as statements from victims of the crackdown as part of their probe.
The ICT opened its first trial connected to the previous government on May 25. In that case, eight police officials face charges of crimes against humanity over the killing of six protesters on August 5, 2024 – the day Hasina fled the country.
Four of the officers are in custody and four are being tried in absentia.
The ICT was set up by Hasina in 2009 to investigate crimes committed by the Pakistani army during Bangladesh's war for independence in 1971. It sentenced numerous prominent political opponents to death, and many saw it as a means for Hasina to eliminate rivals.