• Court verdict reaffirms ‘a fundamental principle (that) no one, regardless of power, is above the law,’ says country’s chief adviser
  
  

DHAKA, Bangladesh/ISTANBUL 

Bangladesh's fugitive former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina described the death sentence issued in absentia against her Monday by a special tribunal in Dhaka as “distasteful" and "politically motivated.”

In a statement shared by her Awami League party through the US-based social media platform Facebook, Hasina claimed that the verdicts announced against her "have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate."

Earlier in the day, the International Crimes Tribunal sentenced Hasina and former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal to death in absentia over a deadly crackdown on a student-led uprising last year which ended the 15-year rule of the Awami League.

Up to 1,400 people were killed during the demonstrations.

The court also sentenced former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun to five years in prison after he admitted his involvement and became a state witness.

Hasina and Kamal fled to India on Aug. 5 last year at the height of the mass uprising that ousted the government.

Hasina said people in Bangladesh "can see that the trials conducted by the so-called International Crimes Tribunal were never intended to achieve justice or provide any genuine insight into the events of July and August 2024."

"Rather, their purpose was to scapegoat the Awami League (party)," she claimed.

The International Crimes Tribunal was originally set up by Hasina’s government in 2010 to prosecute opposition leaders of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and Bangladesh Nationalist Party for mass atrocities committed during the 1971 Liberation War.

The tribunal has been criticized by human rights organizations, however, which have alleged that the proceedings against opposition leaders violated international fair trial standards and human rights.

Following Hasina's ouster, an interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus as the chief adviser was established and has announced that it will hold elections in February.

Yunus' office in a statement described the verdict as "historic" and urged people "not to show any sign of impatience and follow law and order."

Path ahead requires ‘rebuilding trust between institutions, citizens’

Yunus said the conviction and sentencing reaffirms “a fundamental principle: no one, regardless of power, is above the law.”

“This verdict offers vital, if insufficient, justice to the thousands harmed in the uprising of July and August 2024, and to the families who still carry their loss,” he said in a statement posted on the US social media company X’s platform.

He said the dead were “not statistics but students, parents and citizens with rights.”

“This verdict recognizes their suffering and confirms that our justice system will hold perpetrators accountable,” he added.

Bangladesh “is now rejoining global currents of accountability...The path ahead requires not just legal accountability but rebuilding trust between institutions and citizens,” he said.

“Understanding why people risk everything for genuine representation—and creating systems worthy of that trust—is essential. Today’s verdict is a step on that journey,” said Yunus.