Dhaka tribunal sentences seven Awami League leaders to death in absentia

Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal-2 sentenced seven senior Awami League figures to death on 15 September for crimes against humanity tied to the July 2024 uprising that ended Sheikh Hasina’s government. All seven were tried in absentia. The bench was led by Justice Mohammad Nazrul Islam Chowdhury. Chief prosecutor Aminul Islam said each of the seven faced four charges and that most of those charges had been proved.

The list is specific. Obaidul Quader, the party general secretary and a former roads minister. A.F.M. Bahauddin Nasim, joint general secretary. Mohammad Ali Arafat, a former state minister for information. Sheikh Fazle Shams Parash, chairman of the Jubo League. Md Mainul Hossain Khan Nikhil, the Jubo League general secretary. Md Saddam Hossain, president of the Chhatra League. Sheikh Wali Asif Enan, the student wing’s general secretary. Reports place them in India and the United States. State-appointed lawyers spoke for them in court.

The tribunal also ordered the seizure of half the movable and immovable property of Quader, Nasim, Arafat, Parash and Nikhil. Sale proceeds are to go, through the July Foundation or another statutory body, to people killed or injured in the uprising and to their families. Hasina herself was sentenced to death in absentia last November. A UN count put deaths in the 2024 crackdown at about 1,400.

The running total now stands at 68 convictions in uprising-related ICT cases and 22 death sentences. Only four of those convicts are in custody. The charges against this group were framed on 22 January. The trial opened on 17 February. The case is one more chapter in a docket that has already taken in Hasina, her home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, and Dhaka’s former police chief.

The Awami League called the ruling one-sided and fabricated. In a statement on 16 September the party said a trial in absentia still requires that the accused choose their own counsel, and that this bench did not meet that test. Quader, posting after the verdict, quoted Franklin Roosevelt on fear and pointed to December, when Hasina has said she intends to return. The party is banned. Its remaining organisers treat every ICT sentence as a political act. The tribunal treats every sentence as a criminal one.

That split is now the structure of Bangladeshi public law. The Yunus interim authorities inherited a demand for punishment from the streets that toppled Hasina on 5 August 2024. The ICT, revived and restaffed for this docket, is the instrument. Foreign lawyers and rights groups have already argued that in-absentia capital trials with state-picked defence fail the standard the same court claims to apply. The bench has not slowed. Twenty-two death sentences in less than a year is a rate, not an accident.

Enforcement is the open question. Quader and the others are outside the country. India has not sent Hasina back. The United States has not sent the student-wing officers who reached its territory. A death sentence that cannot be carried out still freezes assets, still bars a political return, and still sets the price of any future bargain. The confiscation order is the part that can be executed inside Bangladesh without an extradition.

December, the month Quader named, is now a date on two calendars. Hasina has said she will come back. The tribunal has said what waits if she does. The seven sentences of 15 September add names to that waiting list. They do not close the uprising cases. They do tell the remaining Awami League cadre that the docket is still open and that the penalty at the top of the tariff has not moved.