DHAKA: Bangladesh's caretaker government on Thursday revoked the diplomatic passport of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina after she fled a student-led uprising by helicopter to India earlier this month.
The decision to cancel Hasina's documents leaves the former autocratic leader in potential limbo, and comes on the same day a United Nations team arrived in Dhaka to assess whether to investigate alleged human rights violations.
More than 450 people were killed, many of them by police gunfire, in the weeks before Hasina was ousted, when mobs stormed her official residence in Dhaka and ended her 15-year rule.
The Home Ministry said in a statement that Hasina's passports and those of former government ministers and lawmakers who are no longer in office “have to be revoked.”
It also poses a diplomatic dilemma for Hasina's current host, regional power India.
“The former prime minister, her aides, the former cabinet and all members of the dissolved national assembly were eligible for diplomatic passports by virtue of the positions they held,” the Dhaka-based interior ministry said in a statement.
“If they have been dismissed or removed from their posts, their diplomatic passports and those of their spouses must be revoked.”
The new Dhaka authorities said Hasina and other former senior officials during her tenure could apply for a standard passport, but such documents were subject to their approval.
“When the above-mentioned persons apply for ordinary passports again, two security agencies have to approve their application in order for the passport to be issued,” the ministry added.
Hasina's government has been accused of widespread abuses, including mass detention and extrajudicial killing of political opponents.
The U.N. human rights office assessing the response to the protests had said in a preliminary report last week that there were “strong indications, warranting further independent investigation, that security forces used unnecessary and disproportionate force.”
