DHAKA: Prosecutors reiterated their demands for the extradition of exiled former leader Sheikh Hasina as 13 Bangladeshi former top government officials who were detained during the August revolution appeared in court Monday on charges of “enabling massacres.”
Since Hasina’s rule fell, many of her supporters have been arrested on suspicion of taking part in a police crackdown that murdered over 700 people during the upheaval that resulted in her overthrow.
The 13 defendants, including a judge, an ex-government secretary, and 11 former ministers, were charged with command responsibility for the fatal crackdown on the student-led movement that overthrew the dictatorship, according to prosecutor Muhammad Tajul Islam.
Despite being a fugitive in exile, Hasina, who fled to her old ally India by helicopter on August 5, was scheduled to appear in court in Dhaka on Monday to answer to charges of “massacres, killings, and crimes against humanity.” Islam, the head prosecutor of Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, informed reporters, “We have produced 13 defendants today, including 11 former ministers, a bureaucrat, and a judge.”
“They participate in planning, incite violence, direct law enforcement to shoot on sight, and obstruct efforts to prevent a genocide, thereby complicitly enabling massacres.” After being taken from detention and escorted into court by a ring of security personnel to keep them apart from the sizable audience outside, the defendants were accompanied by about six attorneys.
Numerous human rights violations occurred during Hasina’s 15-year term, including the extrajudicial executions and mass detentions of her political rivals.
Islam asked for more time to gather evidence spanning further back in time, but the charges against the 13 are currently restricted to the police crackdown on student-led rallies.
