Dhaka: Bangladeshi prosecutors on Thursday said a court had issued an arrest warrant for former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who escaped to India in August after she was forced out by a student uprising. The court has ordered her to appear on 18 November, Mohammad Tajul Islam said, chief prosecutor of Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT).
Hasina, 77, has not been seen publicly since leaving Bangladesh. She was last spotted at a military airbase outside New Delhi, India. Abuses of human rights during the 15 years that Hasina has ruled have been rampant, including massive detention and extrajudicial killings of political opponents.
She was at the helm of those who committed massacres, killings, and crimes against humanity in July to August, said Islam, terming it a “remarkable day.”
But Hasina’s presence in India has not made things any easier for Bangladesh and India. Bangladesh has cancelled her diplomatic passport, and under a bilateral extradition treaty, India would be well within its rights to turn her back across the border to face trial. However, the extradition treaty carries a clause that may prevent her extradition if the charges are viewed as being of a “political character”.
This has been done by the Hasina government setting up the disputed ICT in 2010 for looking into the Bangladesh freedom struggle in 1971, and a repressive political tool, subject to infringement of procedural fairness, has been criticized not only by the UN and the human rights groups.
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