Fugitive former prime minister Sheikh Hasina orchestrated a “systemic attack” on protests against her government, Bangladeshi prosecutors said at the opening of her trial over the 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, told the court yesterday in his opening speech.
“The accused unleashed all law enforcement agencies and her armed party members to crush the uprising”.
Hasina, who remains in self-imposed exile in India, has rejected the charges as politically motivated.
As well as Hasina, the case includes ex-police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al Mamun – who is in custody, but who did not appear in court yesterday – and former interior minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, who like Hasina, is on the run.
Up to 1,400 people were killed between July and August 2024 when Hasina’s government launched a brutal campaign to silence the protesters, according to the United Nations.
Islam has brought charges against Hasina and the two men of “abetment, incitement, complicity, facilitation, conspiracy, and failure to prevent mass murder during the July uprising”.
Islam vowed the trial would be impartial.
“This is not an act of vendetta, but a commitment to the principle that, in a democratic country, there is no room for crimes against humanity”, he said.
Hasina, 77, fled to India in August 2024 at the culmination of a student-led mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule, and has defied an extradition order to return to Dhaka.
The prosecution of senior figures from Hasina’s government is a key demand of several of the political parties now jostling for power. The interim government has vowed to hold elections before June 2026. — AFP
