Bangladesh to start legal procedure to bring Sheikh Hasina back from India

Dhaka (AFP): Almost a month after Bangladesh's incumbent interim government came to power, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus-led administration has said that it will initiate the legal procedure to bring back former prime minister Sheikh Hasina who fled to India last month following violent protests.

"As the main perpetrator has fled the country, we will start the legal procedure to bring her back," Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) Chief Mohammad Tajul Islam told reporters on Sunday as he accused the ex-PM of carrying out "massacres".

Islam's statement comes after the country's de-facto Foreign Minister Mohammad Touhid Hossain said that the country "would have to ask for her return" as she faced "so many cases".

Hasina fled the country for India on August 5 after a violent uprising against her led to hundreds being killed, including many students. She has been named in two murder cases already, along with senior members of her cabinet.

Multiple of her former ministers and advisers have also been arrested.

"Bangladesh has a criminal extradition treaty with India which was signed in 2013, while Hasina's government was in power [....] As she has been made the main accused of the massacres in Bangladesh, we will try to legally bring her back to Bangladesh to face trial," the ICT chief prosecutor said.

The ICT was set up by Hasina in 2010, however, her government has been accused of widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killing of her political opponents.

Hasina's last official whereabouts is at a military airbase near India's capital New Delhi. Her presence in India has infuriated Bangladesh.

Dhaka has revoked her diplomatic passport, and the countries have a bilateral extradition treaty which would permit her to return to face criminal trial.

A clause in the treaty, however, says extradition might be refused if the offence is of a "political character".

Interim leader Yunus, last week said that Hasina should "keep quiet" while exiled in India until she is brought home for trial.

"If India wants to keep her until the time Bangladesh wants her back, the condition would be that she has to keep quiet," Yunus, 84, told the Press Trust of India news agency.

His government has been under public pressure to demand her extradition and trial over the hundreds of demonstrators killed during the weeks of unrest that ultimately toppled her.

More than 600 people were killed in the weeks leading up to Hasina's ouster, according to a preliminary United Nations report, suggesting the toll was "likely an underestimate".

Bangladesh last month opened an investigation led by a retired high court judge into hundreds of enforced disappearances by security forces during Hasina's rule.