Bangladesh taking steps to extradite former PM Hasina from India Trending Global News

The International Crimes Tribunal has said it will begin the process to bring back the ousted leader to hold him accountable for “genocides”.

Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) has said it is taking steps to secure the extradition of ousted leader Sheikh Hasina from neighbouring India.

The body’s chief prosecutor said on Sunday that the legal process has begun to bring Hasina back to Bangladesh so she can be prosecuted for deadly violence unleashed by authorities before she was ousted from power in August following massive protests.

Following weeks of protests and a brutal crackdown by authorities, Hasina fled on a military helicopter on August 5 and landed at an airbase near New Delhi to seek refuge. Her presence in India has strained relations between Dhaka and New Delhi, and a diplomatic row is possible as Bangladesh seeks to bring her back to face trial.

ICT chief prosecutor Mohammad Tajul Islam said Hasina is accused of ruling the country with an iron fist during her 15-year rule and is being sought for her role in overseeing a “genocide” during the uprising.

“Since the main culprit has fled the country, we will initiate legal proceedings to bring him back,” he told reporters.

“Bangladesh has a criminal extradition treaty with India which was signed in 2013 when Sheikh Hasina’s government was in power,” Islam said.

“Since he has been made the prime accused in the massacres that took place in Bangladesh, we will try to bring him back to Bangladesh legally so that he can be prosecuted.”

The ICT was set up by Hasina in 2010 to investigate atrocities committed during the 1971 independence war from Pakistan.

Diplomatic tensions

Hasina’s government was toppled amid allegations of widespread human rights abuses, including mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents, as weeks of student-led protests spiraled into mass protests.

According to a preliminary UN report, more than 600 people were killed in the weeks before Hasina stepped down, suggesting the death toll is “likely an underestimate”.

Hasina, 76, has not been seen in public since she fled. Dhaka has revoked her diplomatic passport.

A clause in the extradition treaty between the two countries states that extradition can be refused if the crime is of a “political character”.

However, Bangladeshi authorities have made it clear that Dhaka will work hard to bring the ousted leader to justice.

Interim leader Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace laureate who took power after the coup, said last week that Hasina should “keep quiet” in exile in India until she was brought home to stand trial.

“If India wants to keep him until Bangladesh brings him back, the condition will be that he has to keep quiet,” Yunus told the Press Trust of India news agency.

There is immense public pressure on his government demanding his extradition, and anti-India sentiment is growing among the wider population in Bangladesh.

Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, general secretary of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), told the Indian media that Hasina should be tried in Bangladesh.

This pressure has put India in a difficult position and soured relations between New Delhi and Dhaka.