Live: Bangladesh’s Hasina sentenced to death for crimes against humanity

Live: Bangladesh’s Hasina sentenced to death for crimes against humanity

Monday, 17 November 2025

Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal has sentenced former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to death for crimes against humanity over her government’s violent crackdown on student-led protests last year.

That is ordering the deployment of drones, helicopters and lethal weapons against protesters, and “by virtue of her order” the killings of 12 protesters in Chankarpul of Dhaka and Ashuliya of Sava.

The court also issued a separate sentence of imprisonment till death on three other counts.

That is incitement against protesters, issuing order to kill them and failure to prevent the atrocities and take punitive action against the perpetrators.

“The government is directed to pay considerable amount of compensation to the protesters concerned in this case, who have been killed in the July movement 2024 and also to take measures, to pay adequate compensation to the wounded protesters, in consideration of the gravity of their injury and loss,” the court says.
    
The 78-year-old fugitive politician is on trial in absentia for being the “mastermind and principal architect” behind last year’s suppression of mass demonstrations, in which some 1,400 people were killed.
    
The 2024 uprising ended Hasina’s 15-year “authoritarian” rule marked by allegations of suppression of dissent, and extrajudicial detentions and killings. She has been in exile in India since losing power and has not been seen in public or online.
    
Hasina’s now-banned Awami League party has called the Dhaka tribunal a “kangaroo court” and has urged supporters to protest, raising fears of violence in the country.

“We lost control of the situation but one cannot characterise what happened as premeditated assault on citizens,” Hasina says, according to Reuters news agency.

In a statement carried by AFP news agency, she called the verdicts “politically motivated”.

“The verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate. They are biased and politically motivated,” she said from India.

“I am not afraid to face my accusers in a proper tribunal where evidence can be weighed and tested fairly.”

Bangladesh’s special tribunal sentences former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal to death for crimes against humanity.

Ex-police chief Al-Mamun sentenced to five years

The court says Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun is being awarded leniency for his contribution to the trial, including “material evidence to the tribunal to arrive at the correct decision”.