FILE PHOTO: Students chant slogans near a vandalised mural of Bangladesh's ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, during a protest demanding accountability and trial against Hasina, near Dhaka University in the capital on August 12, 2024. - AFP
DHAKA: Bangladesh's war crimes court ordered fugitive ex-leader Sheikh Hasina on Monday (June 16) to return to face trial on charges amounting to crimes against humanity.
Hasina, 77, fled Dhaka by helicopter to India in August 2024 at the culmination of a student-led mass uprising. She has defied an extradition order to return to Bangladesh.
Up to 1,400 people were killed between July and August 2024 when Hasina's government launched a crackdown in a failed bid to cling to power, according to the United Nations.
Hasina and former senior figures connected to her ousted government and her now-banned party, the Awami League, are being prosecuted in Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal.
Prosecutors have filed five charges against Hasina, including abetment, incitement, complicity, facilitation, conspiracy and failure to prevent mass murder - charges that amount to crimes against humanity under Bangladeshi law.
"The court directed the prosecution team to issue a notice as soon as possible summoning them to appear before the court," chief prosecutor Muhammad Tajul Islam said on Monday.
The trial will resume on June 24 without her if she fails to return.
The prosecution argues that Hasina ordered security forces, through directives from the interior ministry and police, to crush the protests.
Hasina is on trial with two other officials.
One of them, former interior minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, who faces similar charges, is also a fugitive.
The second, ex-police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al Mamun, is in custody and was in court on Monday.
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 said it will hold elections in April 2026, although some parties are pushing for an earlier vote. - AFP
