Ousted Bangladeshi PM Hasina Sentenced to Death in Absentia

Ousted former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity, a Dhaka war crimes court ruled on Monday.

The Daily Telegraph reported that Hasina, 78, was found guilty of having directed the nation’s army to kill anti-government protests in 2024, leaving some 1,400 dead according to U.N. estimates.  Hasina resigned from her position in August and fled the Muslim-majority country of some 170 million people towards India, where she has remained since — as a result, she was tried in court and given the death penalty in absentia.

Judge Golam Mortuza Mozumder read the sentence, which found the former prime minister guilty on three counts,  “incitement, order to kill, and inaction to prevent the atrocities.”

“We had sought capital punishment because we showed, beyond any reasonable doubt, that she was responsible for the mass murder of the civilian protesters,” Prosecutor Maynul Karim told the Telegraph. “The court agreed that, as commander of the security forces, she authorized the violence that killed unarmed civilians.

Karim stressed that the verdict belongs to every victim of her rule, deeming it a victory for every civilian murdered or subjected to forced disappearance for demanding their rights.

“For the first time, they have seen the justice they were denied for so long,” Karim said, stressing that “if justice matched the scale of her crimes” Hasina would face capital punishment “not once, but 1,400 times over.”

“One sentence alone cannot heal the wounds of the victims. They want every perpetrator, every commander, every official who carried out her orders held to account. Punishing Hasina alone is not enough,” Karim said.

Hasina condemned the Dhaka court verdict as a “farce” and described it as “biased and politically motivated” through a reportedly five-page long statement, in which she claimed that the verdict was the government’s way of “nullifying” her party as a political force in the country.

“I am not afraid to face my accusers in a proper tribunal where the evidence can be weighed and tested fairly,” Hasina said, stressing that she challenged Bangladesh’s interim government ot bring the charges against her before the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

“These proceedings are a politically motivated charade,” Hasina told Reuters via email in October. “They have been brought by kangaroo courts, with guilty verdicts a foregone conclusion. They are presided over by an unelected government which consists of my political opponents.”

Sheikh Hasina is the aunt of Tulip Siddiq, a U.K. Labour MP that served as anti-corruption Minister up until her resignation in January amid an ongoing major corruption probe in Bangladesh on allegations that Siddiq and her family illegally acquired land during Hasina’s rule.

Siddiq has not publicly commented on the death sentence against her aunt at press time.

In addition to Hasina, former Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal was also sentenced to death by the court. Like the former Prime Minister, Kamal is a fugitive of the law. Former Police Chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.