The former prime minister of Bangladesh, sentenced to death for the crackdown on student protests

BarcelonaA court in Bangladesh has sentenced former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to death, finding her guilty of ordering a brutal crackdown – which left hundreds dead – against the protesters who last year participated in a wave of student-led anti-government protestsHasina has been tried in absentia, as she has been in exile in India since August 2024. when he resigned and fled the country because of the riotsThe International Criminal Tribunal for the former prime minister, which tries war crimes in the country, has found both the former prime minister and her former interior minister and police chief guilty of allowing the use of lethal force against protesters and failing to prevent atrocities committed against them. Before former police chief Abdullah al-Mamun, the only defendant present for the sentencing, the judges read the charges, detailing the scale of the violence in the police action and referencing evidence of how the former prime minister and her inner circle used lethal force to suppress the uprising. Up to 1,400 people are estimated to have died between July 15 and August 5, 2024, most of them victims of gunfire from the country's security forces, according to a United Nations report.

After the verdict was announced, which drew applause and cheers in the courtroom, the country's Foreign Minister requested India's extradition of Hasina and that of the deceased's former Interior Minister, Asaduzzaman Khan Kam, who was also sentenced. New Delhi, with which the Bangladeshi leader has traditionally enjoyed very good relations, has merely stated that it is aware of the verdict and would "participate constructively," without specifying whether or not it will order the extradition of the former prime minister.

In any case, Hasina, who was also sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of crimes against humanity, has the option of appealing to the Supreme Court, but it is unclear what the outcome of this appeal might be.

Dhaka, and especially the area surrounding the court and government buildings, was heavily secured, as authorities anticipated unrest when the verdict was announced. And so it was. A group of protesters gathered in front of what remains of the house of Hasina's father—former president and prime minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman—to demand its demolition, in a protest that escalated into clashes with police.

"A politically motivated farce"

The sentence, which ends a months-long trial, is the most drastic legal action taken against a former political leader in Bangladesh in decades. It also comes just a couple of months before parliamentary elections, scheduled for early February, in which Hasina's Awami League party is barred from running. Before the verdict, Hasina accused the court of bias and acknowledged that a guilty verdict was "an inevitable conclusion." "These proceedings are a politically motivated farce," she said in a Reuters interview last month, criticizing the court for being presided over by an unelected government of her "political opponents." She also criticized the fact that she had been denied any real opportunity to defend herself.

Students began protesting on the campus of the University of Dhaka, the capital, to denounce a law they considered discriminatory because it reserved more than half of all civil service jobs for certain groups—including the families of veterans who fought in the War of Independence. When the protests were brutally suppressed, they quickly crystallized into a challenge to the government of then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, uniting all sectors of the population in a display of the accumulated discontent with a system of abuse of power and the severity with which it treated political dissent.

Since Hasina fled, the country has been governed by an interim government. led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus with the aim of holding democratic elections as soon as possible.