The court docket within the capital Dhaka accepted a proper cost in opposition to eight police officers in connection to the killing of six protesters on August 5 final 12 months, the day Hasina fled the nation because the protesters stormed her palace.
The eight males are charged with crimes in opposition to humanity. 4 are in custody and 4 are being tried in absentia.
“The formal trial has begun,” Tajul Islam, chief prosecutor of Bangladesh’s home Worldwide Crimes Tribunal (ICT), informed reporters.
“The prosecution believes that this prosecution will be capable to show the crimes carried out by the accused,” he mentioned.
It’s the first formal cost in any case associated to the killings throughout final 12 months’s student-led rebellion, which ended Hasina’s iron-fisted rule of 15 years.As much as 1,400 individuals have been killed between July and August 2024 when Hasina’s authorities launched a brutal marketing campaign to silence the protesters, in accordance with the United Nations.The record of these going through trial contains Dhaka’s former police commissioner, Habibur Rahman, who’s amongst these being tried in absentia.
Hasina additionally fled by helicopter to India, her previous ally.
She stays in self-imposed exile, defying Dhaka’s extradition request to face prices of crimes in opposition to humanity.
‘Command accountability’
The launch of the trials of senior figures from Hasina’s authorities is a key demand of a number of of the political events now jostling for energy because the South Asian nation awaits elections that the interim authorities has vowed will happen earlier than June 2026.
Islam mentioned the eight males have been accused of “completely different obligations”, together with essentially the most senior for “superior command accountability, some for direct orders.. (and) some for participation”.
He mentioned he was assured of a profitable prosecution.
“We now have submitted as a lot proof as required to show crimes in opposition to humanity, each at a nationwide and a global normal,” he mentioned.
Amongst that proof, he mentioned, was video footage of the violence, in addition to voice recordings of Hasina in “conversations with completely different individuals the place she ordered the killing of the protesters utilizing power and deadly weapons”.
The ICT was arrange by Hasina in 2009 to research crimes dedicated by the Pakistani military throughout Bangladesh’s warfare for independence in 1971.
It sentenced quite a few distinguished political opponents to dying over the next years and have become broadly seen as a way for Hasina to eradicate rivals.