Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) says it is taking steps to secure the extradition of ousted leader Sheikh Hasina from neighbouring India.
The chief prosecutor of the body said on Sunday that the legal process to bring Hasina back to Bangladesh, to face trial for the deadly violence waged by the authorities before she was unseated by mass protests in August, has started.
Following weeks of protests and a vicious crackdown by authorities, Hasina fled by a military helicopter on August 5 and landed at an airbase near New Delhi seeking refuge. Her presence in India has affected relations between Dhaka and New Delhi, and a diplomatic dispute is possible as Bangladesh moves to bring her back to face trial.
Mohammad Tajul Islam, the ICT’s chief prosecutor, said Hasina, accused of ruling the country with an iron fist during her 15-year reign, is being sought for her role in overseeing “massacres” during the uprising.
“As the main perpetrator has fled the country, we will start the legal procedure to bring her back,” he told reporters.
“Bangladesh has a criminal extradition treaty with India which was signed in 2013, while Sheikh Hasina’s government was in power,” Islam added.
“As she has been made 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 during the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
Diplomatic strain
Accused of widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killing of her political opponents, Hasina’s government was brought down as weeks of student-led demonstrations escalated into mass protests.
More than 600 people were killed in the weeks leading up to 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 fleeing. Dhaka has revoked her diplomatic passport.
A clause in the extradition treaty between the two countries states that extradition might be refused if the offence has a “political character”.
However, Bangladeshi officials have made it clear that Dhaka will push hard to bring the deposed leader back to face justice.
Interim leader Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who took over after the uprising, last week said Hasina should “keep quiet” while exiled in India until she is brought home for trial.
“If India wants to keep her until the time Bangladesh wants her back, the condition would be that she has to keep quiet,” Yunus told the Press Trust of India news agency.
His government is under significant public pressure to demand her extradition, with anti-India sentiment increasing among the wider population in Bangladesh.
The general secretary of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, told Indian media that Hasina must be tried in Bangladesh.
The pressure has put India in a tricky position and soured relations between New Delhi and Dhaka.
