The country’s International Crime Court will begin trials against former leaders of crimes against humanity.
Fugitive Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina coordinated a “systematic attack” on her protests against her government, Bangladeshi prosecutors said at the start of a fatal crackdown trial last year.
“After scrutinizing the evidence, we have concluded that it is a coordinated, widespread and systematic attack,” Mohammad Tajru Islam, a prosecutor at Bangladesh’s National Court of International Crimes (ICT), told the court in a speech that opened on Sunday.
“The accused unleashed all law enforcement and armed party members and shattered the uprising,” he said, saying Islam had accused the 77-year-old former leader and two other “abuse, agitation, promotion, conspiracy and failure to prevent mass murder” of the 77-year-old former leader and two others during a student-led mass development.
The United Nations says nearly 1,400 Bangladesh were killed between July and August 2024 when the Hasina government launched a brutal campaign to silence protesters. Bangladesh has accused her of crimes against humanity in the murders.
Hasina, her old ally, who continues to be voluntarily in her neighbouring India, refused to accus her of being politically motivated.
She fled from a helicopter to New Delhi last August. National protests have since been marked by her “autonomous” 15-year rules, with repeated allegations of human rights abuses, including attacks, imprisonment, opposition, and even targeted killings of critics.
She then violated an arrest warrant and extradition order to return to Dhaka.
The ICT is also indicting former seniors associated with Hasina’s exiled government and her now banned Awami League party, including former Home Minister Asadutzaman Khan Kamal and former police chief Choudhurri Abdullah al-Mamun.
Their prosecution was an important demand that some political parties are now robbing power. The interim government has pledged to hold elections by June 2026.
Prosecutors filed a report last month in a lawsuit against Hasina, and the court was expected to file formal charges on Sunday.
ICT prosecutor Tajl Islam said on May 12 that Hasina faced at least five charges, including “abuse, instigation, accomplice, promotion, conspiracy and failure,” including “did not prevent mass murder during the July uprising.”
Investigators collected video footage, audio clips, Hasina’s phone conversations, helicopter records and drone movements, and statements from victims of the crackdown as part of the probe.
ICT began its first trial related to the previous government on May 25th. In that case, eight police officers face accusations of crimes against humanity in the murder of six protesters on August 5, 2024.
Four officers are in custody, and four are on trial for absenteeism.
ICT was founded by Hasina in 2009 to investigate crimes committed by the Pakistani military during the Bangladeshi War of Independence in 1971. It sentenced many prominent political enemies to death, and many viewed Hasina as a way to eliminate rivals.
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