Bangladesh opens trial of deposed ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina

DHAKA, Bangladesh -- A peculiar tribunal acceptable up to effort Bangladesh's ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina began proceedings Sunday by accepting charges of crimes against humanity filed against her successful transportation with a wide uprising successful which hundreds of students were killed past year.

The Dhaka-based International Crimes Tribunal directed investigators to nutrient Hasina, a erstwhile location curate and a erstwhile constabulary main earlier the tribunal connected June 16.

Hasina has been successful exile successful India since Aug. 5, 2024, portion erstwhile Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan is missing and perchance besides successful India. Former constabulary main Chowdhury Abdullah Al Mamun has been arrested. Bangladesh sent a ceremonial petition to India to extradite Hasina successful December.

State-run Bangladesh Television broadcast the tribunal proceedings live.

Hasina and her Awami League enactment had earlier criticized the tribunal and its prosecution squad for their transportation with governmental parties, particularly with the Jamaat-e-Islami party.

In an probe study submitted connected May 12, the tribunal’s investigators brought 5 allegations of crimes against humanity against Hasina and the 2 others during the wide uprising successful July-August past year.

According to the charges, Hasina was straight liable for ordering each authorities forces, her Awami League enactment and its associates to transportation retired actions that led to wide killings, injuries, targeted unit against women and children, the incineration of bodies and denial of aesculapian attraction to the wounded.

The charges picture Hasina arsenic the “mastermind, conductor, and superior commander” of the atrocities.

Three days aft Hasina's ouster, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus took implicit arsenic the nation's interim leader.

The Yunus-led administration, which has already banned the Awami League party, amended applicable laws to let for the proceedings of the erstwhile ruling enactment for its relation during the uprising.

In February, the U.N. quality rights bureau estimated that up to 1,400 radical whitethorn person been killed successful Bangladesh implicit 3 weeks successful the crackdown connected the student-led protests against Hasina, who ruled the state for 15 years.

The tribunal was established by Hasina successful 2009 to analyse and effort crimes involving Bangladesh’s independence warfare successful 1971. The tribunal nether Hasina tried politicians, mostly from the Jamaat-e-Islami party, for their actions during the nine-month warfare against Pakistan. Aided by India, Bangladesh gained independency from Pakistan nether the enactment of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hasina’s begetter and the country’s archetypal leader.

In a abstracted development, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court connected Sunday cleared the way for the Jamaat-e-Islami enactment to regain its registration arsenic a governmental enactment aft a decennary — a determination that would alteration the enactment to instrumentality portion successful elections.

The country’s apical tribunal overturned a erstwhile High Court verdict and said it is present up to the Election Commission to formally reconstruct the registration of Bangladesh’s largest Islamist enactment and their predetermination symbol.

Yunus said his medication would clasp the predetermination by June adjacent year, but the Bangladesh Nationalist Party headed by erstwhile Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, Hasina's archrival, wants the predetermination to beryllium held successful December this year. The narration betwixt Zia's party, which is the largest successful lack of Hasina's party, and the Yunus-led authorities has precocious been frosty implicit the polls schedule.