Bangladesh tribunal sentences 68 over 2024 student protest violence, 22 handed death so far
New Delhi, Sep 15 (IANS) Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) has so far sentenced 68 individuals in seven cases linked to alleged murders, incitement, provocation and conspiracy during the July-August 2024 student-led protests, with 22 of them receiving death sentences, according to media reports. The latest verdict on Tuesday sentenced Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader and six others to death.
According to the Bangladesh Business Standard, 18 of those awarded the death penalty are absconding, while four are in custody.
Among the convicts facing capital punishment are former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, senior Awami League leaders and several police officials.
Of those sentenced to death, 11 are Awami League or affiliated-organisation leaders like Sheikh Hasina, Obaidul Quader, and others, while the remaining 11 are police officials.
Hasina, who is Awami League President, and former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal were both sentenced to death on November 17 last year. Former IGP Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, who became a state witness, received five years in prison. Hasina and Kamal were tried in absentia, as were the six sentenced on Tuesday.
Three former senior police officials sentenced to death are the former Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP), its former Joint Commissioner Sudip Kumar Chakraborty, and then Additional Deputy Police Commissioner Shah Alam Mohammad Akhtarul Islam, said the report, adding that five other police officers received prison terms ranging from three to six years.
The 2024 student movement ended Hasina’s decades-long dominance and ushered in a turbulent era with mass protests against her government, citing corruption, failures in education, and increasingly authoritarian rule. The demonstrations quickly spread nationwide, drawing tens of thousands onto the streets. Security forces responded with brutal crackdowns, deploying paramilitary units and live ammunition.
It also marked a historic turning point, forcing the then Prime Minister into exile and culminating in her death sentence by the ICT.
The uprising, driven by student anger over corruption and authoritarianism, left more than an estimated 1,400 dead and reshaped the nation’s political landscape, according to earlier reports. The Awami League was subsequently put under a ban while Hasina fled her country fearing reprisal.
In February this year, a general election was held in Bangladesh, in which the Tarique Rahman-led Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) assumed power.
The ICT of Bangladesh is a domestic war crimes tribunal set up in 2009 to investigate and prosecute suspects for the genocide committed in 1971 by the Pakistan Army and their local collaborators during the Bangladesh Liberation War.
It was established following the Awami League’s decisive election victory in the December 2008 general election with a more than two-thirds majority. The tribunal’s first indictments were issued in 2010, but the main perpetrators of the war crimes – Pakistani soldiers – remained out of their courts.
By 2012, nine leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest Islamist party in the nation, and two of the BNP had been indicted as suspects in war crimes. The first person convicted reportedly was Abul Kalam Azad, tried in absentia as he had left the country; he was sentenced to death in January 2013.
The tribunal’s role and mandate were reevaluated following the 2024 student-led uprising, which alleged new patterns of state violence and mass atrocities.
Significant amendments to the ICT Act were enacted in November 2024, applying them retroactively to modernise and expand the tribunal’s jurisdiction.
–IANS
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