Rise, reign, ruin of Bangladesh's 'Iron Lady'

Hasina, four-time prime minister and political heir of Bangladesh's founding leader, was sentenced to death Monday For her deadly crackdown on student protesters last year

- AGENCIES

For nearly two decades, Sheikh Hasina’s name moved with the pulse of Bangladesh, sometimes steady, sometimes storm-tossed.

To her supporters, she is the architect of a modern, developing Bangladesh; to her critics, she was an autocrat whose appetite for power blinded her to the cries of the streets.

Few, however, could have imagined that the very tribunal the 77-year-old deposed prime minister once created to try hardened war collaborators would one day place her in the dock.

When the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) pronounced the death sentence against Hasina in absentia Monday, it marked the most dramatic turn yet in the story of the world’s longest-serving female head of government.

Hasina was born September 28, 1947, in Tungipara in the then East Pakistan, into a family that would come to define Bangladesh’s identity. Her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led Bangladesh to independence with India’s help in 1971 and became its founding father.

She studied at the University of Dhaka, earning a master’s degree in Bengali literature, and became deeply engaged in student politics.

In 1968, Hasina married nuclear scientist MA Wazed Miah, whose low-profile, scholarly life stood in contrast to the turbulence of Bangladeshi politics.