David Eide
On November 17, Sheikh Hasina, the former prime minister of Bangladesh, was sentenced to death in absentia by the Bangladeshi International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) for crimes against humanity stemming from her government’s lethal crackdown on student protestors during the July 2024 Revolution.[1] This sentence is particularly notable because the ICT had initially been established by Hasina’s Awami League government upon its assumption of power in 2009, to prosecute international crimes committed during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. The ICT, its various controversies, and the sudden about-face it has taken following the 2024 revolution provide a useful illustration of the hurdles faced by domestic international criminal law tribunals.
Framework and Origins
Hybrid tribunals, domestic institutions that prosecute crimes of an international criminal character, have been used in many different contexts. Some hybrid tribunals, like the Special Court for Sierra Leone, were established in coordination with international bodies, while others, such as the Iraqi High Tribunal, are entirely of domestic creation.[2] A common criticism of hybrid tribunals is that they are often far more susceptible to domestic political pressures than international tribunals like the ad hoc tribunals of the 1990s or the International Criminal Court.[3]
The ICT has its origins in the Bangladesh War of Liberation, a conflict that saw Bangladesh gain its independence from Pakistan. This war was accompanied by a genocide by the Pakistani army and their local collaborators, known colloquially as Razakars, which saw the killing of between 300,000 and 3,000,000 Bengalis alongside other serious crimes.[4] In 1973, an act was introduced to allow for the prosecution of Bengali individuals for their acts during the war, but due to significant political instability in the country, no further action was taken.[5]
This changed with the landslide election victory of Sheikh Hasina in 2009 against a coalition of parties that had several accused war criminals among their leaders. Hasina, the daughter of a prominent leader of the Bengali national movement, made the creation of the ICT a core facet of her campaign, and her administration made its establishment a key priority.[6] The establishing act was easily passed, and in 2010 the ICT officially entered into operation, beginning a turbulent series of prosecutions that would be marked by much controversy, both domestically and internationally.
Regular Operations and Controversies
Many of the most high-profile indictments issued by the ICT targeted various leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s principal Islamist party, which had supported Pakistan during the liberation war and which continued to oppose the Awami League-led government.[7] By 2012, significant concerns had arisen within the international community as to the conduct of the ICT, with questions being raised about the independence and impartiality of its judges.[8] Controversy also arose within Bangladesh, with supporters of Jamaat leading major protests starting in December 2012, which were met with harsh repression by the authorities.[9] In February 2013, the ICT sentenced Abdul Quader Molla, the assistant secretary general of Jamaat, to death.[10] This sentence was notable not only for being the first death sentence handed down to an individual in ICT custody, but also because the tribunal had initially sentenced Molla to life in prison and resentenced him after protests calling for harsher punishment broke out.[11]
The usage of the death penalty was a major point of controversy throughout the original tenure of the ICT, as international criminal law scholars have long opposed the death penalty.[12] Further controversy erupted in 2012 when it was revealed that a chief judge of the tribunal, Mohammed Nizamul Huq, was corresponding with a Brussels-based Bangladeshi lawyer regarding important aspects of the trials, raising serious questions about his neutrality.[13] The Bangladeshi opposition widely condemned the ICT, viewing it as an inherently partial court organized primarily to quash opposition to Hasina’s government.[14]
Dormancy and Revival
This opposition, combined with dwindling support in the international community, led the ICT to enter a period of relative dormancy following 2014. After this point, very few new indictments were issued, and the primary focus shifted to carrying out the various death sentences imposed by the court.
In July 2024, widespread protests erupted in Bangladesh against the increasing authoritarian rule of Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League, motivated primarily by student opposition to job quotas favoring descendants of fighters in the liberation war.[15] These protests were met with extreme violence by the authorities, with various observers estimating at least 1,000 deaths among the protestors.[16] This repression was ultimately unable to quash the protests, and on August 5th, Sheikh Hasina officially resigned and fled to India, leading to the establishment of a caretaker government led by Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Prize–winning economist.
On October 14th, Yunus’s government reconstituted the ICT under a new chief prosecutor to investigate crimes committed during the revolution.[17] On June 1st, 2025, a case was submitted to the ICT accusing Sheikh Hasina and several high-ranking members of her government of five counts of crimes against humanity relating to the massacre of protestors in 2024.[18] Hasina was tried in absentia due to her refusal to return from India, with the trial being broadcast on national television, and on November 17th, 2025, she was convicted of three of the five counts brought against her and sentenced to death.[19] Hasina and many of her supporters rejected the verdict, disputing all the charges against her and challenging the court’s authority.[20] International observers and NGOs repeated many of the same criticisms they had leveled during the first iteration of the ICT, with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch raising concerns about the fairness of the tribunal, the speed of the proceedings, and the imposition of death sentences in absentia.[21] As of the date of this blog, however, Hasina remains in India and seems unlikely to return, meaning that the principal purpose of these convictions appears to be symbolic and directed at domestic and international audiences.
Conclusion
The case of the ICT reveals some of the pitfalls of domestic tribunals for the prosecution of international crimes. As suggested by the rapid turn from the ICT being criticized as a tool of political retribution for the Awami League to a mechanism used to prosecute them once they were forced from power, the ICT was never free from political pressure, which greatly affected its ability to serve as an impartial body. In addition, the procedures of the ICT never truly aligned with the standards for international tribunals, which strongly prohibit the application of the death penalty and trials in absentia. While there have been some success stories for hybrid tribunals, the ICT is certainly not one of them, and its example highlights the difficulties of prosecuting international crimes at the domestic level, especially without support from international bodies.
[1] Rhea Mogul & Esha Mitra, Bangladesh’s ousted leader Sheikh Hasina sentenced to death after crimes against humanity conviction, CNN (Nov. 17, 2025, 3:30 ET), https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/17/asia/bangladesh-sheikh-hasina-verdict-intl-hnk.
[2] Harry Hobbs, Hybrid Tribunals and the Composition of the Court: In Search of Sociological Legitimacy, 16 Chi. J. Int’l L. 482, 486–87 (2016).
[3] Id. at 509–511.
[4] Nayanika Mookherjee, Denunciatory practices and the constitutive role of collaboration in the Bangladesh War, in Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy, and the Ethics of State-Building 48, 49 (Sharika Thiranagama & Tobias Kelly, eds., 2009).
[5] Ignoring Executions and Torture: Impunity for Bangladesh’s Security Forces, Hum. Rts. Watch (May 18, 2009), https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/05/18/ignoring-executions-and-torture/impunity-bangladeshs-security-forces.
[6] The Trials of Sheikh Hasina, The Economist (Nov. 26, 2009) https://www.economist.com/asia/2009/11/26/the-trials-of-sheikh-hasina.
[7] Rupak Bhattacharjee, Bangladesh: Implications of Jamaat-e-Islami’s Indictment, Inst. Peace Conflict Stud. (Jan. 30, 2014) https://www.ipcs.org/comm_select.php?articleNo=4276
[8] Bangladesh: Government Backtracks on Rights, Hum. Rts. Watch (Feb. 1, 2013) https://www.ipcs.org/comm_select.php?articleNo=4276.
[9] Jason Burke & Saad Hammadi, Abdul Quader Mollah execution leads to violence in Bangladesh, The Guardian (Dec. 13, 2013, 11:32 ET) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/13/bangladesh-execution-mollah-jamaat-islami-violence
[10] Id.
[11] Id.
[12] Letter to the Bangladesh Prime Minister regarding the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act, Hum. Rts. Watch (May 18, 2011, 16:50 EDT) https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/05/18/letter-bangladesh-prime-minister-regarding-international-crimes-tribunals-act.
[13] Anbarsan Ethirajan, Bangladesh war crimes judge Nizamul Huq resigns, BBC (Dec, 11, 2012) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20677752.
[14] Bhattacharjee, supra note 7.
[15] Faisal Mahmud, Student protests in Bangladesh over job quotas escalate into violence, Nikkei Asia (July 18, 2024, 13:19 JST) https://asia.nikkei.com/spotlight/society/student-protests-in-bangladesh-over-job-quotas-escalate-into-violence.
[16] Mahathir Mohammed, Health Sub-committee: Primary list of 1,581 killed in revolution made, Dhaka Tribune (Sep. 28, 2024, 6:14 PM) https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/360034/revolution-2024-%C2%A0-preliminary-list-of-1-581-killed.
[17] David Bergman, The Second Life of Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, JusticeInfo.Net (Feb. 20 2025) https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/141852-second-life-bangladesh-international-crimes-tribunal.html.
[18] Julhas Alam, Bangladesh’s tribunal indicts ousted prime minister over deaths of protesters, AP (July 10, 2025 8:54 CST) https://apnews.com/article/bangladesh-hasina-indicted-eccdec5fd7a4c433c8b1559d9910eecb.
[19] Mogul & Mitra, supra note 1.
[20] Farah Bahgat & Kate Hairsine, Bangladesh’s ex-PM Sheikh Hasina sentenced to death, Deutsche Welle (Nov. 17, 2025) https://www.dw.com/en/bangladesh-sheikh-hasina-sentenced-to-death-crimes-against-humanity/live-74771291.
[21] Julhas Alam, What former leader Sheikh Hasina’s death sentence means for Bangladesh, AP (Nov. 19, 2025, 2:11 CST) https://apnews.com/article/bangladesh-hasina-yunus-election-verdict-59c81f60710ac893608001fd8ef733d2.