A special tribunal in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka Monday sentenced Bangladesh's ousted ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in absentia to death for crimes against humanity during the protests in July and August in 2024, reported Xinhua.
Meanwhile, the Awami League, the political party headed by Hasina and different human rights organisations termed the verdict as unfair, intentional and political motivated as per the blueprint of Muhammad Yunus led interim government, according to international media.
Bangladesh's former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal was also awarded the death penalty, while former Inspector General of Bangladesh Police Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun was sentenced to five years' imprisonment in the case.
The tribunal convicted Hasina of ordering a violent police response to a student protest, which led to her being removed from power last year.
While Kamal remains a fugitive, his co-accused Mamun, in custody, has pleaded guilty and become the tribunal's first state witness since its establishment in 2010.
Reacting to the verdict on Monday in a statement, Hasina said the death penalty was the interim government's way of "nullifying [her party] the Awami League as a political force" and that she was proud of her government's record on human rights, reported British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
"I am not afraid to face my accusers in a proper tribunal where the evidence can be weighed and tested fairly," said the BBC report, quoting Hasina as saying.
Responding to the verdict, Amnesty International (AI) in a statement said that the trial and sentence is neither fair nor just.
"Those individually responsible for the egregious violations and allegations of crimes against humanity that took place during the student-led protests in July and August 2024 must be investigated and prosecuted in fair trials. However, this trial and sentence is neither fair nor just. Victims need justice and accountability, yet the death penalty simply compounds human rights violations. It's the ultimate cruel, degrading and inhuman punishment and has no place in any justice process," AI Secretary General, Agnès Callamard said.
Callamard said that justice for survivors and victims demands that fiercely independent and impartial proceedings, which meet international human rights standards are conducted. Instead, this trial has been conducted before a court that Amnesty International has long criticized for its lack of independence and history of unfair proceedings.
"Further, the unprecedented speed of this trial in absentia and verdict raises significant fair trial concerns for a case of this scale and complexity. Although Sheikh Hasina was represented by a court-appointed lawyer, the time to prepare a defence was manifestly inadequate. Such unfair trial indicators are compounded by reports that defence cross examination of evidence deemed to be contradictory was not allowed," Callamard.
Awami League in a statement denounced the verdict terming it intentional, politically motivated and ill motive of Muhammad Yunus to abolish the Awami League and the spirit of country´s liberation war.
Earlier in May 2025, the interim government in Bangladesh led by Muhammad Yunus banned all activities of the Awami League, the political party headed by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The interim government lodged hundreds of murder cases against the Awami League leaders and activists, leaders of pro-liberation organisations, cultural activists and journalists indiscriminately.
The government also took various anti-liberation moves and indulged the activities and vandalisms by the July-August protesters, Islamists and religious fundamentalists all over the country.
US based newspaper The New York Times in a report entitled "As Bangladesh Reinvents Itself, Islamist Hard-Liners See an Opening" focused the rise of Islamists during the regime of Muhammad Yunus led government.
Earlier, On February 5, the protesters under the banner of anti-discrimination student movement, demolished the residence of Bangladesh's founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, housing the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum in Dhaka.
In February this year, a group of religious extremists stormed into a stall at a book fair in Bangladesh protesting against selling of a book written by exiled feminist writer Taslima Nasrin and forced the publisher to close the stall.