A Bangladesh student leader who was instrumental in ousting Sheikh Hasina and is now part of the interim government said when she returns home she will have to face trial for killings during her tenure, including the recent protests that forced her to resign and flee on Monday.
Nearly 300 people, many of them university and college students, have been killed in the protests that began in July as student demonstrations against reservations in government jobs before spiralling into violent protests to oust Hasina, who has ruled Bangladesh for 20 of the past 30 years.
Hasina’s son Sajid Wazed Joy has said that she will return to Bangladesh from India, where she is taking refuge, after elections are announced in her country. The main opposition party has demanded that the elections be held within three months.
“I wonder why she fled the country,” student leader Nahid Islam, who is a minister in the caretaker government, told Reuters late on Friday in his first interview since joining the government on Thursday as an adviser.
“We will demand justice for all the killings that happened during his reign, this is one of the main demands of our revolution. Even if he doesn’t come back, we will work in this direction.”
“We want to arrest him – whether it is possible through the normal judicial system or a special tribunal, we are discussing how to proceed with the case,” said Islam, 26, who now heads the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology.
Joy, who lives in the United States, did not respond to a request for comment. Hasina, who is under Indian government protection, could not be contacted.
Another student leader, Abu Bakar Mozumder, separately told Reuters he wanted Hasina to return and face trial.
Islam said one of the main priorities of the caretaker government is to hold free and fair elections, as the last one was boycotted by the opposition, and also to investigate suspected corruption in the previous government.
Islam said Bangladesh would need electoral and constitutional reforms before any elections, so it was unclear when the next election would be held. He declined to give a specific timeline.
When asked if he would like to become prime minister one day, he said, “What I will become next, my ambition depends on the people of Bangladesh.”
He said India has developed relations with Hasina’s Awami League party but not with the people of Bangladesh as a whole.
“We want friendly relations with India,” he said. “India also needs to focus on its foreign policy, otherwise it will become a problem for the whole of South Asia.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
