Sajeeb Wazed, son of ousted Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, issued a strong statement Thursday, declaring that Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus “will not be able to kill Hasina” or cause her harm. “Yunus cannot touch my mother and he cannot do anything to her,” Wazed told IANS, speaking from India, where Hasina remains in exile.
Hasina’s future hangs in the balance after a tribunal in Bangladesh sentenced her to death on charges linked to last year’s violent student-led uprising. The former prime minister has been in exile in India since August 2024, after the unrest forced her government’s removal.
Sheikh Hasina, 78, was sentenced to death in absentia by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) for “crimes against humanity” over her government’s crackdown on student-led protests last year.
Wazed, expressing confidence in his mother’s safety, stated, “They will not be able to kill her, but they will execute the verdict. First of all, they can’t get her. And once there is a rule of law, this entire process will get thrown out.” He criticized the legal proceedings as “illegal and unconstitutional,” maintaining that the verdict would not stand once due process is restored.
Responding to questions about possible repercussions for Muhammad Yunus, including calls to revoke his Nobel Prize, Wazed argued, “Nobel committees never take back their prizes. But look at Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar… The Peace Prize is basically given by lobbying. But she led to Rohingyas getting killed, and now Yunus is turning Bangladesh into a failed state and an Islamist terrorist state,” he said.
Wazed asserted that India’s Congress party, had it been in power, would have acted the same way as the current administration in supporting constitutional processes. “In India, there is rule of law and you have constitutional process. You people have always followed the Constitution and laws,” Wazed remarked.
‘Complete Mockery of Justice’: Wazed Slams Legal Process
Commenting on the court ruling, Wazed described the process as deeply flawed and “mockery of justice,” describing it as “illegal”.
“This has been done completely illegally. It’s a mockery. First of all, there is a government that is unelected, unconstitutional, and illegal. Then, in order to fast-track the trial in the tribunals, they had to amend laws, which you can only amend with a Parliament. Currently, there is no Parliament. So the process itself was completely illegal. They terminated 17 judges on this tribunal and appointed a new judge who has no experience. He has publicly made a nasty comment about my mother. So he is clearly biased,” he alleged.
He further pointed out that Hasina was denied the right to choose her own legal defence. “They have not allowed my mother to appoint any lawyer. They appointed their own lawyers to defend my mother. In the history of Bangladesh, such trials take years of hearings, but they completed this in 140 days. So, it’s a complete mockery of justice. There has been no due process. This is a joke,” Wazed concluded.