The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) which on Monday sentenced ousted Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to death after finding her guilty of crimes against humanity was set up by her own Awami League government to prosecute those who had committed atrocities during the country’s liberation war in 1971.
Hasina and her interior minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal were both sentenced to death for the crackdown on protesting students during the July-August 2024 movement and ex-police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun was sentenced to five years of imprisonment.
The courtroom erupted in applause when Hasina’s death sentence was read out.
Hasina and Kamal had fled from Bangladesh after last year’s uprising. They were tried in absentia. Hasina is in exile in India. The whereabouts of the former minister are unknown.
Al-Mamun was present inside the court where the verdict running into 453 pages was read by the head of the three-member tribunal, Justice Md Golam Mortuza Mozumder, for nearly three hours and streamed live on Bangladesh Television.
Mamun had turned approver for the state and reportedly made a “full and true disclosure of the whole of the circumstances.”
He was sentenced to five years imprisonment by the tribunal which took into account his providing “material evidence to the tribunal to arrive at the correct decision.”
During the trial the three-member tribunal concluded its hearing on October 23 after nearly a month-long hearing.
Evidence drawn from nearly 10, 000 pages of report collected in 14 volumes that included local and international reports, medical reports of the killed and the injured in the firing, post-mortem reports, ballistic reports, schedules of helicopters allegedly pressed into service by the Hasina administration to quell the rebellion and media footage were used.
Bullet and shell casings, blood stained-clothes, transcripts of telephonic conversations between Hasina and other officials were perused. Doctors, protesters and investigators were among the 54 witnesses who testified before the tribunal.
Some part of the transcripts of Hasina’s conversations with police officials and civic heads was read out in the court during the sentencing process.
The city of Dhaka and the districts had witnessed violence over the past week as the day of the sentencing neared. The now-banned Awami League has called a nation-wide strike in protest against the trial.
“Now, after 15 months of this regime, every class – the struggling poor, the 9-5 middle class, even the well-off – has seen the truth: Behind the Nobel medal hides a venomous snake. A snake being fed, protected and empowered by the very forces that opposed Bangladesh in 1971,” the Awami League wrote in its X (formerly Twitter) handle.
“This snake is now coiling around the country, trying to suffocate and swallow Bangladesh piece by piece. If we fail to resist this force now, we will lose our sovereignty. We will lose our freedom,” it said.
Last week during a similar nationwide shutdown around 20 vehicles were set ablaze across Bangladesh.
On Monday morning, before the tribunal started reading the verdict, a small explosive was set off on a road near the court premises.
Protesters had assembled outside what remains of the Dhanmondi house of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, which protesters had vandalised last year after Hasina fled from Dhaka.
On Monday police and army personnel also staved off attempts by the protesters who came with two excavators to demolish the remainder of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s house where he and his family members were gunned down 50 years ago.
The Dhaka Metropolitan police chief Sheikh Mohammad Sazzat reportedly instructed the force to open fire if any vehicles were burnt or bombs hurled.