Bangladesh tribunal removes ex-PM Hasina’s lawyer who had demanded her execution

Dhaka: Bangladesh’s crimes tribunal on Wednesday removed the state-appointed counsel for former prime minister Sheikh Hasina amid a controversy over his previous demand for her execution.

The Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) is running a trial against Hasina, whose nearly 16-year Awami League regime was toppled last year in a student-led protest on August 5.

According to officials here, the ICT-BD relieved Aminul Gani Titu as state defence counsel for Hasina, a day after the tribunal appointed him to defend the former prime minister, who has been accused of mass killings during July-August 2024 and enforced disappearances.

In a subsequent development, the ICT-BD appointed another lawyer, Amir Hossain, as the state defence counsel for Hasina and home minister in her cabinet Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal.

The tribunal's action came after Titu's remarks in a Facebook post last year recently boiled into a media controversy.

Talking to reporters, Titu acknowledged that he had made the demand regarding Hasina in his Facebook post hours ahead of her ouster on August 5, 2024, but had he been allowed to carry on his task, he would have done it professionally.

Hasina is now in India while most of her party leaders, including ministers and officials, are behind bars or on the run at home and abroad since the fall of her government.

The ICT-BD, which was originally formed to try hardened collaborators of Pakistani troops during the country’s 1971 Liberation War on war crime charges, has now visibly shelved the 1971 war crimes cases initiated by the past regime.

Instead it has launched the trial process of Hasina and leaders and officials of her regime on identical charges like the Commission of Crimes Against Humanity.