Bangladesh calls for India’s cooperation in extraditing ousted leader

• Hasina, who resigned as prime minister in August, has been accused of carrying out “massacres.”
• Bangladesh has a criminal extradition treaty with India, which allows Hasina to return for a criminal trial.
• Interim leader, Muhammad Yunus, has called for Hasina to remain silent in India until her return.

Bangladesh’s war crimes tribunal will seek the extradition of ousted leader Sheikh Hasina from neighboring India, according to its chief prosecutor, who has accused her of carrying out “massacres.” Last month, weeks of student-led demonstrations in Bangladesh escalated into mass protests, leading Hasina to resign as prime minister and flee to India by helicopter on August 5, ending her 15-year iron-fisted rule.

“As the main perpetrator has fled the country, we will start the legal procedure to bring her back,” Mohammad Tajul Islam, chief prosecutor of Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), told reporters on Sunday.

Hasina established the ICT in 2010 to investigate atrocities committed during the 1971 independence war against Pakistan. Her government faced accusations of widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killing of political opponents.

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

“As she has been made the main accused of the massacres in Bangladesh, we will try to legally bring her back to Bangladesh to face trial.”

At 76, Hasina has not been seen in public since fleeing Bangladesh, with her last known location being a military airbase near India’s capital, New Delhi. Her presence in India has angered Bangladesh. Dhaka has revoked her diplomatic passport, and the bilateral extradition treaty between the two countries allows for her return to face a criminal trial.

A clause in the treaty, however, says extradition might be refused if the offense is “political.”

Interim leader Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who assumed office after the uprising, said last week that Hasina should “keep quiet” while in exile in India until she is brought back to Bangladesh for trial. “If India wants to keep her until Bangladesh requests her return, she must remain silent,” Yunus, 84, told the Press Trust of India news agency.

His government has faced public pressure to demand Hasina’s extradition and trial for the hundreds of demonstrators killed during the weeks of unrest that led to her ouster. A preliminary United Nations report indicates that more than 600 people died in the weeks leading up to Hasina’s removal, suggesting that this number is “likely an underestimate.”

Last month, Bangladesh launched an investigation led by a retired high court judge into hundreds of enforced disappearances by security forces during Hasina’s rule.

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