Former Bangladesh PM Hasina sentenced to death

A Bangladesh court has sentenced ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to death, concluding a months-long trial that found her guilty of ordering a deadly crackdown on a student-led uprising last year.

The ruling comes months ahead of parliamentary elections expected to be held in early February.

Hasina's Awami League party has been barred from contesting.

"The verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate," Hasina said in a statement issued from hiding in India.

"They are biased and politically motivated."

The International Crimes Tribunal, Bangladesh's domestic war crimes court located in the capital Dhaka, delivered the guilty verdict amid tight security.

The verdict can be appealed in the Supreme Court.

The interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus described it as a "historic verdict", but called for calm and warned that it would deal with any disorder.

Hasina's son and adviser, Sajeeb Wazed, said yesterday that they would not appeal unless a democratically elected government took office with the Awami League's participation.

During the trial, prosecutors told the court that they had uncovered evidence of her direct command to use lethal force to suppress a student-led uprising in July and August 2024.

After the verdict, the Bangladeshi foreign ministry called on India to extradite Hasina and former interior minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, who was also sentenced to death in the same case.

India said it noted the verdict, was committed to the best interests of the people of Bangladesh and would "engage constructively", without going into more detail.

Earlier today, police clashed with protesters demanding the demolition of what remains of the house of Hasina's father in Dhaka. Much of it was destroyed last year.

Police and paramilitary forces were deployed around government buildings and the tribunal complex, and there was tight security across the capital and other major cities.

Bangladesh was tense ahead of the ruling, with at least 30 crude bomb explosions and 26 vehicles torched across the country over the past few days. There were no reported casualties.

Hasina's son warned yesterday there could be violence if a ban on her Awami League party taking part was not lifted.

According to a United Nations report, up to 1,400 people may have been killed during the protests between 15 July and 5 August, 2024, with thousands more injured - most of them by gunfire from security forces - in what was the worst violence in Bangladesh since its 1971 war of independence.

Hasina was assigned a state-appointed lawyer for the trial but she refused to recognise the court's authority and said she rejected all charges.

"Its guilty verdict against me was a foregone conclusion," Hasina added in the statement, claiming she would be willing to attend a fresh trial outside her home nation.

"I am not afraid to face my accusers in a proper tribunal where the evidence can be weighed and tested fairly," she said.

"That is why I have repeatedly challenged the interim government to bring these charges before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague."