Dhaka tribunal sentences seven Awami League leaders to death over the 2024 uprising

Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal-2 sentenced seven senior figures of the banned Awami League to death on Tuesday, 15 September, for crimes against humanity tied to the crackdown on the 2024 student-led uprising. The three-member bench, headed by Justice Mohammad Nazrul Islam Chowdhury, tried the accused in absentia and said most of the four charges against each man had been proved.

The condemned are Obaidul Quader, the party’s general secretary and a former road transport minister; A.F.M. Bahauddin Nasim, joint general secretary; Mohammad Ali Arafat, a former state minister for information and broadcasting; Sheikh Fazle Shams Parash, chairman of the Jubo League; Mainul Hossain Khan Nikhil, the youth wing’s general secretary; Saddam Hussain, president of the Chhatra League; and Sheikh Wali Asif Enan, the student wing’s general secretary. State-appointed lawyers appeared for them.

Chief prosecutor Md Aminul Islam told reporters the bench had found the charges proved “beyond doubt” and that the state would try to locate the men and bring them back. He said property measures would wait until a 30-day window closes. The tribunal ordered confiscation of half the movable and immovable assets of Quader, Nasim, Arafat, Parash and Nikhil, with proceeds to go, through the July Foundation or another statutory body, to families of people killed or injured in July and August 2024.

The verdict lifts the official count from the July cases to 68 convictions and 22 death sentences. Only four of those 22 people are in custody. Eighteen, including Sheikh Hasina, remain outside the country or otherwise beyond the court’s reach. Hasina, 78, was sentenced to death in November 2025 for her own role in the crackdown and has lived in India since she left Dhaka by helicopter in August 2024. She does not recognise the tribunal. The government of Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, which won the first post-Hasina election in February, has asked New Delhi for her extradition.

Tuesday’s list is not a random sample of mid-level officials. Quader ran the party machine for years and sat in cabinet. Arafat ran the information ministry during the uprising. The Jubo League and Chhatra League were the street organisations that opponents accused of beating and shooting protesters. Prosecutors framed the case as a chain of direction, incitement and facilitation rather than a single massacre site. That framing lets the bench treat speeches, orders and logistics as part of the same crime against humanity.

The legal architecture is the same one used against Hasina. The International Crimes Tribunal was revived and restaffed after the change of government. Defence lawyers appointed by the state have limited contact with clients who will not appear. Human rights groups that documented the 2024 killings have also warned that trials in absentia, with confiscation attached, will be judged abroad as much by procedure as by the underlying facts. The bench’s answer is the public record of the uprising: mass graves, hospital logs, and video of security forces and party cadres in the streets.

For the current government the sentences serve two purposes. They keep the July dead at the centre of national politics. They also freeze the assets of a party that is already banned from electoral life. Confiscation of half an absentee’s property is a tool that outlasts the man. Families of the dead are told the money will reach them through a named foundation. Whether that pipeline works is a separate administrative test.

India now sits in an awkward place. Hasina is on its soil. Dhaka wants her, and now wants Quader and the others if they are found in the same neighbourhood of exile politics. New Delhi has not advertised a decision. Every new death sentence raises the cost of silence without forcing an immediate handover.

Inside Bangladesh the practical effect is narrower. The seven men were already fugitives. The verdict does not empty a dock. It adds names to a list and starts a clock on property. Prosecutors say they will hunt. The 30-day pause on confiscation is the first hard date on the calendar.

What remains untested is enforcement across borders. A tribunal can sentence a man in Dhaka. It cannot walk him into a cell in London, Dubai or Delhi. That gap explains why 18 of 22 condemned people are still free, and why Tuesday’s hearing ended with a prosecutor talking about location data rather than a prison van.