Bangladesh Student Leader Who Led Protest Wants Sheikh Hasina To Face Trial

10/8/2024 6:33

        A Bangladeshi student leader who was instrumental in overthrowing 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 in July with students demonstrating against quotas in government jobs before spiralling into violent protests to oust Hasina, who had ruled Bangladesh for 20 of the last 30 years.
        
        Hasina's son Sajeeb Wazed Joy has said she will 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.
        
        "I am curious why she fled the country," student leader Nahid Islam, who is effectively a minister in the caretaker government, told Reuters late 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."