Himalaya Harbinger, Uttarakhand Bureau.
Bangladeshi prosecutors at the International Crimes Tribunal have formally charged former prime minister Sheikh Hasina of crimes against humanity during the mass uprising in the country last year, local media reported.
According to the Dhaka Tribune, besides Sheikh Hasina, the country’s former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and ex-IGP Chowdhury Mamun are also named as co-accused.
Mohammad Tajul Islam, the chief prosecutor at Bangladesh’s domestic International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), has alleged that Hasina orchestrated a “systemic attack” on protests against her government as the trial against her opened on Sunday.
“Upon scrutinising the evidence, we reached the conclusion that it was a coordinated, widespread and systematic attack,” Islam told the court in his opening speech, according to AFP news agency.
The accused unleashed all law enforcement agencies and her armed party members to crush the uprising”.
On August 5 last year, Sheikh Hasina’s 16-year rule with the Awami League was overthrown in a violent mass uprising. A fact-finding committee of the United Nations Human Rights High Commission estimates that around 1,400 people were killed in the protests. Since then, the 77-year-old Hasina has been residing in India.
She faces multiple cases in Bangladeshi courts, where she is accused of numerous charges like mass murders and crimes against humanity, and enforced disappearances.
In a first, Bangladesh’s ICT allowed state-run BTV to broadcast the hearing of the case against the former prime minister. Hasina, has rejected the charges as politically motivated.
During Sunday’s hearing, Islam brought charges against Hasina and the two men of “abetment, incitement, complicity, facilitation, conspiracy, and failure to prevent mass murder during the July uprising”.
“This is not an act of vendetta, but a commitment to the principle that, in a democratic country, there is no room for crimes against humanity”, he said, AFP reported.
The news agency reports that investigators have gathered video footage, audio recordings, Hasina’s phone calls, documentation of helicopter and drone activity, along with testimonies from victims of the crackdown for their investigation.
Notably, the ICT was set up by Hasina in 2009 to investigate crimes committed by the Pakistani army during Bangladesh’s war for independence in 1971.
