Bangladesh tribunal indicts former PM Hasina on mass murder charges

Dhaka: Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal on Sunday indicted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina and two others on several charges, including mass murder, for their alleged role in the violent crackdown on student-led protests last year.

Sunday's proceedings marked the start of Hasina's trial in absentia nearly 10 months after the ouster of her government following the protests.

“We do hereby take into cognisance the charges,” the three-judge ICT-BD bench led by Justice Golam Mortuza Majumdar said after a prosecution team formally accused them of attempting to tame the protests using brutal force.

The tribunal, after hearing a 145-page excerpt during the indictment proceedings, simultaneously issued a fresh arrest warrant against Hasina and then home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal.

The third accused, the then inspector general of police Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, is in custody to stand trial in person.

The prosecution charged Hasina with exercising absolute authority to ruthlessly suppress the uprising. The two others were accused of provocation, complicity, abatement, instigation and facilitation.

“Upon reviewing the evidence, we concluded that it was a coordinated, widespread and systematic attack,” ICT-BD chief prosecutor Mohammad Tajul Islam told the court.

All three were accused of superior command responsibility for the crimes.

The prosecution said they would submit video, audio, and forensic evidence during the trial and listed 81 people to appear as witnesses.

The tribunal's investigation agency on May 12 in its report to the chief prosecutor's office named Hasina as the instigator of the killings during the uprising that ousted her government.

The chief prosecutor urged the court to treat the Awami League as a criminal organisation since the crimes were committed on a partisan basis.

The interim government led by Professor Muhammad Yunus last month ordered the disbanding of the party until the trials of its leaders were completed.

Under the ICT-BD law, if convicted, Hasina and the co-accused could face the death penalty.

The proceedings were broadcast live on television for the first time in Bangladesh's history.

The proceedings were scheduled to begin at 9.30 am but were slightly delayed as unidentified people hurled three crude bombs at the gate of the tribunal hours before the beginning of the trial.

Police said two of the bombs exploded while the third was defused while they were trying to identify and arrest the miscreants, examining CCTV footage.

Ousted on August 5 last year after the agitation, Hasina faces multiple cases in Bangladesh.

The ICT-BD earlier issued an arrest warrant against Hasina while the interim government sought her repatriation from India in a diplomatic note. New Delhi has only acknowledged receipt with no further comment.

Most senior leaders and officials of Hasina’s party and government were arrested to face charges like mass murder during the July-August protests last year that left hundreds of people, including students and policemen, dead.

According to a UN rights office report, some 1,400 people were killed between July 15 and August 15 last year as violence continued even after the fall of Hasina's Awami League regime.

The tribunal was originally formed by the past regime to try collaborators of Pakistani troops during the 1971 Liberation War.

Six top leaders of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and one leader of the former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party were hanged to death after being convicted by the court.