dhaka
\nBangladesh on Wednesday convicted fugitive former prime minister Sheikh Hasina of contempt of court and issued a six-month prison sentence in absentia, the first verdict since she was ousted last year.
\nHasina, 77, fled to neighbouring India at the culmination of the student-led uprising in August 2024, and has defied orders to return to Dhaka.
\n\u201cShe will serve the sentence the day she arrives in Bangladesh or surrenders to the court,\u201d chief prosecutor Mohammad Tajul Islam told reporters after the court decision.
\nThe case centred around comments that prosecutors said she had made after she was ousted from power, which they said threatened witnesses in ongoing court hearings.
\n\u201cThe prosecution team believes her comment created an aura of fear among those who filed the cases and among the witnesses,\u201d Islam said.
\nShakil Akanda Bulbul, a fugitive leader of her now-banned Awami League, was sentenced to two months in prison in the same case.
\nUp to 1,400 people were killed between July and August last year, according to the United Nations, when Hasina\u2019s government ordered a crackdown on protesters in a failed bid to cling to power.
\nIn a separate ongoing trial that began on June 1, prosecutors say that Hasina held overall command responsibility for the violence.
\nHer state-appointed defence lawyer said she has denied the multiple charges that amount to crimes against humanity under Bangladeshi law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
dhaka Bangladesh on Wednesday convicted fugitive former prime minister Sheikh Hasina of contempt of court and issued a six-month prison sentence in absentia, the first verdict since she was ousted last year. Hasina, 77, fled to neighbouring India at the culmination of the student-led uprising in August 2024, and has defied orders to return to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":83197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83201,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83186\/revisions\/83201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}