A Bangladeshi student leader who was instrumental in overthrowing former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina and is now part of an interim government said she must face trial when she returns home as planned for the killings during her term, including during recent protests, which led her to resign and flee on Monday.
About 300 people, many of them university and college students, were killed in the demonstrations that began last month with students demonstrating against quotas in government jobs before spiraling into violent protests to oust Hasina, who had ruled Bangladesh for 20 of the past 30 years.
Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy has said she would return to Bangladesh from India, where she is sheltering, once elections are announced in her home country, which the main opposition has demanded should be held in three months.
Photo: AFP
“I am curious why she fled the country,” student leader Nahid Islam, who is effectively a minister in the caretaker government, said on Friday in his first interview since joining the government on Thursday as an adviser.
“We will seek justice for all the killings that happened under her, that has been one of the main demands of our revolution. Even if she does not come back, we will work towards that,” he said.
“We want to arrest her — whether that will work through the regular judicial system or a special tribunal on that or not, we are discussing how to proceed on the matter,” said Islam, 26, who now heads the postal, telecommunication and information technology ministries.
Asked about whether one day he would like to be prime minister, he said: “My ambition on what I next become depends on the people of Bangladesh.”
He said India had fostered a relationship with Hasina’s Awami League party, but not the Bangladeshi public as a whole.
"We want friendly ties with India," he said. "India also needs to look at its foreign policy, else it will become a problem for the whole of South Asia."
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
Hundreds of thousands of Guyana citizens living at home and abroad would receive a payout of about US$478 each after the country announced it was distributing its “mind-boggling” oil wealth. The grant of 100,000 Guyanese dollars would be available to any citizen of the South American country aged 18 and older with a valid passport or identification card. Guyanese citizens who normally live abroad would be eligible, but must be in Guyana to collect the payment. The payout was originally planned as a 200,000 Guyanese dollar grant for each household in the country, but was reframed after concerns that some citizens, including
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS