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Published : 22 Jul 2026, 05:47 PM
Ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina has vowed to return to Bangladesh and face trial, despite the risk of imprisonment or execution.
In a written interview with Japan's Kyodo News, Hasina said she was aware she could be imprisoned or executed if she returned but would still face legal proceedings.
"I will return to Bangladesh. I will appear before the court," the Awami League chief said, without naming a specific court.
"They may send me to prison. They may even try to hang me. I know those risks," she said, in an apparent reference to Bangladeshi authorities.
She rejected her conviction over deadly crackdown on 2024 student-led protests as "politically motivated".
In a separate interview with Reuters on Jul 9, Hasina said “she and senior Awami League colleagues plan to return from India in December and surrender”.
"They may arrest me on my return, they may even kill me," she said in the nearly hour-long telephone interview.
Hasina fled to India in August 2024 after resigning amid the July Uprising.
The International Crimes Tribunal sentenced her to death in absentia in November last year over allegations that she ordered the deadly crackdown on the 2024 student-led mass movement.
Bangladesh has sought her extradition from India.
A spokesperson for India's Ministry of External Affairs recently said New Delhi had received the request and was examining it in light of the legal and judicial processes involved.
Earlier this month, Information Advisor Zahed Ur Rahman said the government was trying to bring Hasina back to stand trial and would ensure she had the opportunity to defend herself.
The unrest began after the High Court reinstated a 30 percent quota in public service jobs for descendants of 1971 war veterans, triggering student protests that later grew into a nationwide anti-government movement.
A United Nations report estimated about 1,400 people were killed during the unrest, most of them by security forces.
Hasina denied ordering the killings and claimed political opponents had manipulated the movement.
"If independent foreign forensic experts examine how each person died [during the unrest] and from which weapons or bullets, the truth can still be found," she told Kyodo News.
On the tribunal's 2025 ruling, Human Rights Watch has raised concerns over a trial held in Hasina's absence, while stressing that those responsible for abuses under her government should be held to account, the outlet said.
Hasina, daughter of founding father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, served as prime minister across five terms, from June 1996 to July 2001 and from January 2009 to August 2024.
During her third term, militants attacked the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka in July 2016, killing 20 hostages, nine Italians, seven Japanese, two Bangladeshis, one Indian and one US citizen of Bangladeshi origin, along with two police officers who died responding to the attack.
Seven were sentenced to death in 2019 over the attack, a sentence later commuted to life imprisonment.
The Japanese victims had been working on a rapid railway project in Dhaka supported by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), as per Kyodo News.
"A stable Bangladesh is not only important for Bangladesh. It matters for South Asia, the Bay of Bengal, development partners and countries like Japan that have invested trust, resources and friendship in our development journey," Hasina told the outlet.
Speaking of Bangladesh's future, she said the country needed healing, but that "reconciliation cannot mean impunity”, adding that those responsible for crimes must face proper legal processes.
"The next decade can be a decade of recovery and renewal, but only if democracy is restored and the people are allowed to decide their own future," she added.
After Hasina fled the country, an interim government was formed under Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who was appointed chief advisor after student protest leaders proposed him for the post.
Following the February election, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Tarique Rahman took office as prime minister.
All activities of Hasina's Awami League have been banned since May 2025.
