Sheikh Hasina vows to return, but will Bangladesh accept fugitive e PM?
Awami League leader plans to return from exile in India despite facing a death sentence for a bloody crackdown on the 2024 uprising that ousted
Awami League leader plans to return from exile in India despite facing a death sentence for a bloody crackdown on the 2024 uprising that ousted her. Dhaka, Bangladesh – Two years after she was ousted and forced to flee to India following a student-led uprising, former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has made her strongest commitment yet to return, saying she is prepared to face arrest, imprisonment or even death, but cannot remain away from her supporters. “I know I may be detained, I may be sent to prison,” Hasina, 78, said in an audio address to journalists from New Delhi on Wednesday. “They may try to enforce verdicts issued in fabricated cases. But fear cannot decide my duty to the people.” Hasina’s address at an event hosted by New Delhi’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia marked the second anniversary of the end of her 15-year rule, which saw widespread allegations of killings and arrests of political opponents, human rights violations and rigged elections. In November, Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal – a notorious court Hasina herself founded to try her rivals – found her guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced her to death for ordering the killing of more than 1,400 people during the 2024 uprising. Bangladesh has repeatedly asked India for Hasina’s extradition, but New Delhi, a close Hasina ally, says the request is under examination. As Hasina spoke, protesters in capital Dhaka burned her effigy, while Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s government expressed “outrage” over New Delhi allowing the event, warning it could further strain diplomatic ties. In Magura town, about 170km (105 miles) southwest of Dhaka, the ancestral house of former Bangladesh cricket captain Shakib Al Hasan was attacked by a mob angry over Hasina’s address. Shakib, a former parliamentarian from Hasina’s Awami League party, has remained outside Bangladesh since the uprising. He has been accused of murder, embezzlement, fraud and money laundering by the authorities. Hours before Hasina’s address, which Shakib also joined, Prime Minister Rahman inaugurated a memorial museum dedicated to the 2024 uprising at Hasina’s official residence.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, who headed the interim administration after Hasina’s ouster, also attended the ceremony. ‘No political future’ Against such a backdrop of a rival government, widespread anger and a death sentence looming over her head, Hasina delivered a defiant address, rejecting the widely accepted accounts of the July 2024 uprising, arguing instead that it was not a popular movement but a coordinated campaign to topple her government. “They may put me in jail, or they may kill me. Anything may happen. But still I have to go back,” she said in response to a question asked by a journalist covering the New Delhi event. The former prime minister repeatedly framed her planned return as an effort to “restore democracy and promote national reconciliation”, arguing that Bangladesh needed “healing rather than confrontation”. Among the members of Hasina’s now-banned Awami League party, her announcement has rekindled hopes of a political comeback. Al Jazeera reached out to five Awami League leaders. Three declined to comment. One senior leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “The leader will definitely return, and we will all come out of our hiding places.” Another party activist, Shajidul Islam Shobuj, who has been hiding since the uprising, told Al Jazeera: “We are eagerly awaiting her return and are already working to reorganise the party.” But leaders of the 2024 uprising say reconciliation cannot come before accountability. “Sheikh Hasina can return to Bangladesh at any time if she has the ability to do so,” Akhter Hossain, a former student leader and now a legislator from the Citizen Party (NCP), told Al Jazeera. “She will have to face Bangladesh’s judicial process.” Akhter said the Awami League had “no political future” unless it was held accountable for the “crimes committed during its time in power”. Many others who protested during the uprising have also received Hasina’s announcement with scepticism. “She previously said she would not flee the country, yet she did. We do not believe she will return simply because she says she will,” said Atikul Gazi, a 23-year-old who survived being shot at point-blank range by the security forces on August 5, 2024, but lost his left arm.
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