More than a dozen Bangladeshi former top government officials arrested after a mass uprising in August have been charged with “enabling massacres” before a special tribunal which also told investigators they have one month to complete their work on former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Dozens of Hasina’s allies were taken into custody since her regime collapsed, accused of involvement in a police crackdown that killed more than 1,000 people during the unrest that led to her removal and exile to India.
Prosecutor Mohammad Tajul Islam on Monday said the 13 defendants, who included 11 former ministers, a judge and an ex-government secretary, were accused of command responsibility for the deadly crackdown on the student-led protest that toppled the regime.
“We have produced 13 defendants today, including 11 former ministers, a bureaucrat, and a judge,” Islam, the chief prosecutor of Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, told reporters. “They are complicit in enabling massacres by participating in planning, inciting violence, ordering law enforcement officers to shoot on sight, and obstructing efforts to prevent a genocide.”
Hasina, who fled to New Delhi by helicopter on August 5, was also due in court in Dhaka on Monday to face charges of “massacres, killings, and crimes against humanity”, but she remained a fugitive in exile, with prosecutors repeating extradition demands for her.
Golam Mortuza Majumdar, the head judge of the three-member International Crimes Tribunal, set December 17 for investigators to finish their work. The deadline came after prosecutors sought more time for the investigation.
Hasina’s nearly 16-year tenure saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.
“The crimes that led to mass murders and genocide have occurred over the past 16 years across the country,” said Islam.
The tribunal’s chief prosecutor has already sought help from Interpol through the country’s police chief to arrest Hasina. India is a member of Interpol, but this does not mean New Delhi must hand Hasina over as each country applies their own laws on whether an arrest should be made.
On Sunday, interim leader and Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus said his administration will seek her extradition from India – a request that could strain relations with a key regional ally, which maintained close ties with the removed leader throughout her time in power.
Yunus said as many as 3,500 people may have been abducted during Hasina’s “autocratic” rule.
Protests broke out across Bangladesh this summer after college students demanded the abolition of a controversial quota system in government jobs that they said favoured supporters of the governing party. Though Bangladesh’s top court scrapped the quota, the protests soon morphed into a wider call for Hasina’s removal from power.
The government’s response was one of the bloodiest chapters in Bangladesh’s history as security forces beat and fired tear gas and live ammunition on peaceful demonstrators, killing more than 1,000 people in three weeks and arresting thousands.
