New delhi
\nBangladesh\u2019s fugitive former leader Sheikh Hasina has vowed to return to her country \u201cthis year\u201d, according to an interview published on Sunday, months after she was sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity.
\nHasina, 78, fled to neighbouring India in August 2024 after a student-led uprising ended her 15-year, iron-fisted rule.
\nShe has not been seen in public since, except for a rare speech broadcast to a packed press club in New Delhi in January.
\nIn an interview with Indian broadcaster NDTV, Hasina said she was not afraid of death and that the verdict against her was \u201cpart of an illegal, unconstitutional and politically motivated process\u201d.
\n\u201cMany conspiracies have been hatched against me. But breaking through every web of conspiracy\u2026 I was elected prime minister five times by the people\u2019s vote and worked for the country\u2019s unprecedented development,\u201d Hasina said.
\n\u201cI want to say clearly: overcoming every obstacle and every conspiracy, I will return to my country this year,\u201d she added in response to a question on whether she would return despite the death penalty verdict.
\nLast November, Hasina was found guilty by a Dhaka court of incitement, order to kill and inaction to prevent atrocities, and sentenced to be hanged.
\nThe activities of her former ruling Awami League, once one of the country\u2019s most popular, have been outlawed.
\nTies between India and Bangladesh have improved since Prime Minister Tarique Rahman won a landslide election victory in the South Asian nation of 170 million people in February.
\nBut frictions remain, with Bangladesh repeatedly demanding the extradition of Hasina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New delhi Bangladesh\u2019s fugitive former leader Sheikh Hasina has vowed to return to her country \u201cthis year\u201d, according to an interview published on Sunday, months after she was sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity. Hasina, 78, fled to neighbouring India in August 2024 after a student-led uprising ended her 15-year, iron-fisted rule. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":99527,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99515","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\/99515","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=99515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99541,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99515\/revisions\/99541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}