Bangladesh Nationalist Party which is the main opposition party has asked India to extradite former prime minister Sheikh Hasina to face trial for alleged crimes after she fled Dhaka and the violent student protests that demanded her removal from office.
Sheikh Hasina abruptly resigned and fled to the Indian capital Delhi on August 5 after protesters stormed her residence in Dhaka amid weeks-long deadly protests by students against a government job policy that later became a nationwide movement against her rule for nearly 16 years.
“It is our call to you that you should hand her over to the government of Bangladesh in a legal way. The people of this country have decided to conduct her trial. Let her face that trial,” said Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, secretary general of Bangladesh Nationalist Party, one of the two main political parties in the country.
She has been accused by critics of crushing her political rivals, including the BNP, and her government has been under suspicion of human rights crimes, including murders, abductions and extortion.
At least 15 cases of murder and “crimes against humanity” have been filed by police against Ms Hasina since she fled, including killings during the student-led movement.More than 450 people, mostly students, were killed in the protests during July and August.
Three separate cases of “mass murder” are being investigated by the Bangladeshi War Crimes Tribunal, a body set up by her in 2010, to investigate crimes committed during the country’s liberation war against Pakistan in 1971.
New Delhi, which has historically shared good relations with Sheikh Hasina. can turn down the request on grounds that Article 8 of their extradition treaty allows the signatories to refuse requests that have “not been made in good faith and in the interests of justice”.
A human rights team from the United Nations will visit Dhaka this week to discuss the investigations into alleged crimes during the recent unrest with Bangladesh’s interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.