THE BANGLADESH DILEMMA BEYOND L’AFFAIRE HASINA

Hasina’s unconstitutional sentencing is an irritant New Delhi can keep aside to mend ties if the next Dhaka govt is fairly elected. The growing clout of Pak-friendly outfits poses new worries

- PINAK RANJAN CHAKRAVARTY

T would be puerile to believe that the death sentence passed by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) on Sheikh Hasina was fair. The trial was riddled with faults on various judicial counts.

Hasina was found guilty of mass murder by the ICT, which itself was set by the Hasina government in 2009 to try those accused of war crimes during the 1971 War of Liberation. A majority of the war criminals were from the Jamaat-e-Islami (Jel), the largest pro-Pakistan organisation that had collaborated with the Pakistani Army in committing genocide. Some Jel leaders were hanged, and others jailed for life after conviction.

The proceedings against Hasina were vitiated from the very beginning after Muhammad Yunus, a sworn enemy of Hasina nursing political ambitions, was foisted on Dhaka as the head of an interim government (IG). This interim arrangement is widely considered unconstitutional when parliament and the Constitution are both suspended. The Jel and other Islamist outfits, all deeply connected to Pakistan, are now the backbone of the IG and are calling the shots.

The ICT’s mandate was changed by adopting unconstitutional methods that were rubber-stamped by the partisan judiciary. The chief prosecutor in Hasina’s case is a Jel lawyer who had defended the war criminals. Hasina was not permitted to choose her defence team. All these factors have raised serious questions about the validity of the judgement.

The IG’s ire against Hasina and the Awami League (AL) is well known. They are weaponising a compromised judiciary to attack opponents while the media remains bludgeoned into submission. Judges have been forced out and new ones affiliated to Jel appointed en masse.