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A Bangladeshi court has formally charged ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina with crimes against humanity over the deaths of more than 1,000 protesters during last year’s mass demonstrations that ended her 15-year rule.
At the opening of the trial on Sunday, Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) accepted allegations that Hasina “incited, encouraged and ordered” a nationwide police crackdown that killed at least 1,500 people and injured more than 25,000, according to chief prosecutor Mohammad Tajul Islam.
Based on evidence and witness testimony, Hasina’s “systematic and widespread attacks against innocent, unarmed students and civilians” amount to crimes against humanity, Tajul Islam said in his opening remarks.
The court issued arrest warrants for the 77-year-old former prime minister, who has been living in India as a fugitive since her ouster in August 2024. Hasina is scheduled to appear in court on June 16 alongside former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and former police chief Chowdhury Mamun.
All three face five charges related to crimes against humanity, including incitement, complicity, facilitation, conspiracy and failure to prevent mass murder, for their alleged roles in the violent suppression of the protests.
Bangladesh requested Hasina’s extradition from India in December, but has not yet received a formal response.
The arrest warrants come 10 months after Hasina fled Bangladesh following weeks of escalating protests that began in June 2024. What started as peaceful student-led demonstrations against a “discriminatory” civil service quota system quickly turned deadly.
According to U.N. estimates, more than 1,400 people were killed between July 1 and August 15, 2024, in what the U.N. Human Rights Office described as a government-ordered crackdown. Nearly 13 percent of those killed were children, the office said.
“The brutal response was a calculated and well-coordinated strategy by the former Government to hold onto power in the face of mass opposition,” U.N. Human Rights Chief Volker Türk said.
Hasina, the country’s longest-serving leader and daughter of Bangladesh’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, served as prime minister from 1996 to 2001 and again from 2009 until her removal last year. Her government has long faced accusations of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, media suppression and widespread corruption.
Estimates of public money lost to corruption under her administration reportedly range from $17 billion to $30 billion. The blatant theft of public funds fuelled outrage in a country where nearly 19 percent of its 173 million people live in poverty, according to the World Bank.
The first trial stemming from the crackdown began on May 25, when eight police officers were charged with killing six protesters on August 5, 2024—the same day Hasina fled the country.
The ICT was originally established in 2010 during Hasina’s tenure to try war crimes suspects from Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
