The International Crimes Tribunal says it will begin proceedings to bring the ousted leader back to answer for the “massacres.”
Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) says it is taking steps to secure the extradition of ousted leader Sheikh Hasina from neighbouring India.
The agency's chief prosecutor said Sunday that the legal process to bring Hasina back to Bangladesh to face trial over deadly violence by authorities before she was ousted by mass protests in August has begun.
Following weeks of protests and a brutal crackdown by authorities, Hasina fled in a military helicopter on August 5 and landed at an air base near New Delhi seeking refuge. Her presence in India has strained relations between Dhaka and New Delhi, and a diplomatic row is possible as Bangladesh moves to bring her back to trial.
Mohammad Tajul Islam, chief prosecutor for the ICT, said Hasina, accused of ruling the country with an iron fist during her 15-year reign, was being sought for her role in overseeing “massacres” during the uprising.
“As the main perpetrator has fled the country, we will initiate legal proceedings to bring her back,” he told reporters.
“Bangladesh has a criminal extradition treaty with India which was signed in 2013, when the Sheikh Hasina government was in power,” Islam added.
“As she is the main accused of the massacres in Bangladesh, we will try to legally bring her back to Bangladesh to face trial.”
The ICT was set up by Hasina in 2010 to investigate atrocities committed during Pakistan's 1971 war of independence.
Diplomatic tension
Accused of widespread human rights abuses, including mass detention and extrajudicial killing of her political opponents, Hasina's government was toppled when weeks of student-led demonstrations turned into mass protests.
More than 600 people were killed in the weeks before Hasina's ouster, according to a preliminary United Nations report, suggesting the death toll was “likely an underestimate.”
Hasina, 76, has not been seen in public since she fled. Dhaka has revoked her diplomatic passport.
A clause in the extradition treaty between the two countries states that extradition could be refused if the crime has a “political character.”
Bangladeshi officials have made clear, however, that Dhaka will push hard to bring the deposed leader back to justice.
Interim leader Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who took power after the uprising, said last week that Hasina should “keep quiet” while in exile in India until she is brought home to face trial.
“If India wants to hold her until Bangladesh wants her back, the condition would be that she has to remain silent,” Yunus told the Press Trust of India news agency.
His government is under significant public pressure to demand his extradition, as anti-Indian sentiment rises among the broader Bangladeshi population.
The secretary general of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, told Indian media that Hasina should be tried in Bangladesh.
The pressure has put India in a difficult position and has deteriorated relations between New Delhi and Dhaka.
