Dhaka, Bangladesh:
A Bangladeshi court docket on Thursday ordered an arrest warrant for exiled ex-leader Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India in August after she was toppled from energy by a student-led revolution.
“The court docket has… ordered the arrest of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina and to supply her in court docket on November 18,” Mohammad Tajul Islam, chief prosecutor of Bangladesh’s Worldwide Crimes Tribunal, instructed reporters on Thursday.
Hasina’s 15-year rule noticed widespread human rights abuses, together with the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.
“Sheikh Hasina was on the helm of those that dedicated massacres, killings and crimes towards humanity from July to August”, Islam stated, calling it a “outstanding day”.
Hasina, 77, has not been seen in public since fleeing Bangladesh, and her final official whereabouts are at a navy airbase close to India’s capital New Delhi.
Her presence in India has infuriated Bangladesh.
Dhaka has revoked her diplomatic passport, and the international locations have a bilateral extradition treaty which might allow her to return to face legal trial.
A clause within the treaty, nonetheless, says extradition may be refused if the offence is of a “political character”.
Hasina’s authorities created the deeply contentious ICT in 2010 to probe atrocities in the course of the 1971 independence conflict from Pakistan.
The United Nations and rights teams criticised its procedural shortcomings, and it grew to become broadly seen as a way for Hasina to eradicate political opponents.
A number of instances accusing Hasina of orchestrating the “mass homicide” of protesters are being probed by the court docket.
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by EDNBOX workers and is printed from a syndicated feed.)