Bangladesh court orders arrests of ex-PM Hasina, associates over protesters’ killings

Bangladesh issued arrest warrants Thursday against ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and 45 associates for alleged crimes against humanity linked to the killings of protesters during an uprising that toppled the government and forced her to flee to India.

The arrest order against Hasina and the others, who include former cabinet ministers, was issued by the same court that her government had established to prosecute suspected collaborators and criminals from Bangladesh’s bloody war of independence in 1971. 

Mohammad Tajul Islam, chief prosecutor of Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), confirmed that Justice Md. Golam Mortuza Majumdar, the court’s chairman, had ordered the arrests. 

The prosecutor said Hasina, who remains in neighboring India according to its Ministry of External Affairs, and the other defendants were required to appear in the Dhaka court on Nov. 18. 

The autocratic ex-leader’s government collapsed in early August, when Hasina resigned and fled after weeks of student-led protests against her 15-year rule.

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Among the others facing arrest are Obaidul Quader, the ousted Awami League party’s general secretary; Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, former home minister; Anisul Huq, former law minister; Hasan Mahmud, former foreign minister; and M.A. Arafat, state minister for information and broadcasting.

Many among the 45 could not be located but some have been arrested, including Huq, Bangladesh authorities said.

An interim government, led by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, announced it would take the necessary steps to extradite Hasina, who fled to India on Aug. 5, according to the state-run Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha news agency. 

“We (the foreign ministry) have just received the news. …We will certainly take necessary steps to repatriate her,” Foreign Affairs Adviser Md. Touhid Hossain told journalists Thursday afternoon, BSS reported. “We have one month’s time, and we will take necessary steps to this end.”

If she is apprehended and brought home to stand trial, Hasina, 77, is to appear before the very tribunal she established in 2009 to try those who allegedly committed crimes against humanity during the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. Her late father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was Bangladesh’s founding president who had led the movement to break free from Islamabad rule.   

Most of those convicted and executed by the ICT under Hasina’s government were the leaders of the faith-based political party Jamaat-e-Islami and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The Awami League defended the tribunal as an effort “to end the culture of impunity” while Jamaat called judgments judicial executions.

Yunus’ government reestablished the tribunal on Oct. 14.

Protests

Soon after Hasina boarded a helicopter and fled to India on Aug. 5, leaders of the Students Against Discrimination movement, which spearheaded this year’s uprising, called for the former prime minister and others to be tried for killings linked to police, security agencies and Awami League associates during the July and August protests. 

Leaders of the movement are serving in the interim government. At least 750 people died in the protests across the country, according to primary official estimates, although the student movement alleges the number is more than double.

This week, the government decided to file the warrants against Sheikh Hasina and her party leaders under the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act, 1973, established by the government headed then by Hasina’s father.

The act was passed to try leaders of Jamaat and other parties that opposed Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan and allegedly committed war crimes alongside the Pakistani Army. With support from India, Bangladesh emerged as an independent country on Dec. 16, 1971, when over 90,000 soldiers surrendered in Dhaka.

Impartiality questioned

Ruhul Amin, a Supreme Court lawyer, noted that prosecutor Tajul Islam had served as a defense lawyer for Jamaat leaders charged with war crimes before the tribunal.

“There is no legal bar for him (Tajul) to be chief prosecutor of the same International Crimes Tribunal, but there remain questions whether he would be able to perform the job of chief prosecutor fairly and impartially,” Amin told BenarNews.

Z.I. Khan Panna, a lawyer and human rights activist who heads Ain O Salish Kendra, questioned the prosecutor’s ties.

“Tajul was the defense lawyer at the same tribunal that convicted the Jamaat leaders during the rule of Awami League government,” Khan Panna told BenarNews. 

“The same person, Tajul, is now the chief prosecutor of the same tribunal that would try Sheikh Hasina and other Awami League leaders. Certainly, there will be conflict of interest,” he said.