Dhaka trembled under the weight of uncertainty as the verdict of the International Crimes Tribunal rippled across Bangladesh. The announcement that former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had been sentenced to death sent shockwaves through the nation. Within hours, her party headquarters at 23 Bangabandhu Avenue released a lengthy statement—her first direct response since the tribunal’s controversial rulings.
Hasina’s words were defiant. Calm yet forceful, she declared “the verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate.” She insisted that the tribunal was not a mechanism for justice but an instrument of political revenge designed to erase the Awami League from public life.
She reminded the nation that millions were living “under the chaotic, violent and socially-regressive administration of Dr Mohammad Yunus.” In her narrative, the interim government was not a savior but a usurper, one that presided over economic collapse, widespread repression, and unprecedented attacks on minorities and journalists. Attacks on her supporters, she claimed, continued unchecked while extremists gained footholds in the administration.
Hasina rejected the tribunal’s claims absolutely. “I wholly deny the accusations that have been made against me,” she wrote, insisting that neither she nor other political leaders ordered killings during the unrest of July and August 2025. The tribunal, she argued, was neither international nor impartial; instead, “any senior judges or even senior advocates who have previously expressed any sympathy for the previous government have been removed or intimidated into silence.”
Her frustration was also personal. She wrote that she was given “no fair chance to defend in court’, nor even to have lawyers of her choice represent her in absentia. The guilty verdict, she said, had been predetermined.
Outside the political theater, Bangladesh reeled from the violence that had erupted in the months leading to the verdict. Government buildings were burned, police stations looted, and protests spiraled into bloodshed. Hasina described a nation where constitutional order had fractured and where “peaceful demonstrators have been shot and killed” under the new regime.
She acknowledged the tragedies of July and August but insisted they were misrepresented. The situation, she said, had spiraled beyond the control of security forces, but it was false to portray it as a planned assault on civilians. “We lost control of the situation,” she wrote, “but to characterize what happened as a premeditated assault on citizens is simply to misread the facts,” she said.
Her response ended not in resignation but in challenge. She reiterated her call for international oversight, noting her appeal for the charges to be heard before the International Criminal Court. She believed the interim government resisted this because “it knows that the ICC would acquit me.”
Across Bangladesh, debate raged—was she a wronged leader fighting for democracy, or a fallen prime minister deflecting responsibility? Only one truth was certain: the nation stood at a crossroads, its future uncertain, its past fiercely contested.
