Bangladesh tribunal sentences three police officers to death over 2024 student protest

DHAKA: A special Bangladeshi tribunal on Sunday sentenced to death three police officers, including Dhaka’s former police chief in absentia, on charges of attempts to tame the 2024 student-led violent street protest that toppled the then prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s regime.

The Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) sentenced former Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) commissioner Habibur Rahman, additional deputy commissioner Rashedul Islam and former officer in-charge of a Dhaka police station Mashiur Rahman on charges of killing two people, including shooting a young man hanging from a building cornice during the violence.

“They will be hanged by neck until their death,” Chairman of Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) Mohammad Golam Mortuza Mozumder pronounced.

The ICT-BD's three-judge panel simultaneously handed down a life term to a police sub-inspector and a 20-year imprisonment to an assistant sub-inspector, the only accused to face the trial in person.

The student-led violent street protests spread over July and August and dubbed as 'July Uprising' prompted Hasina to flee to India on August 5, 2024. Muhammad Yunus-led interim regime took charge three days later.

A UN rights office report in 2025 estimated that up to 1,400 people were killed between July 15 and August 15 during the July Uprising as Hasina's government ordered a sweeping security crackdown on the protesters.

Three of the five convicts are presumed to be on the run at home or abroad and under the ICT-BD law, they might challenge the verdict in the apex Appellate Division of unitary Bangladesh’s Supreme Court after their surrender or arrest.

Earlier, on November 17, 2025, the ICT-BD sentenced to death Hasina and home minister of her cabinet Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal after trial in absentia conserving their superior responsibility in committing crimes by their attempt to tame the protestors.

On the same day, the special court simultaneously handed down a five-year jail term to former inspector general of police Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, who had turned an “approver” or state-witness in the case.

According to the prosecution, the police officers convicted on Sunday were accused of using lethal force against students and civilians beyond their assigned jurisdictions on orders of Hasina and senior officials.

The trials of several high profile politicians are underway at the ICT-BD, which is set to deliver on June 30 its verdict against Hasanul Haque Inu, president of the left-leaning Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JASOD) and former information minister in Hasina’s now disbanded Awami League-led alliance government.

A case questioning the legal basis and legitimacy of the amended ICT-BD Act – under which the trials are underway – however, is currently pending before the High Court after senior Supreme Court lawyer Mohammad Mohsen Rashid filed a writ petition on June 24, 2026.

The ICT-BD was originally constituted in 2010 by the Hasina-led government to try hardened collaborators of Pakistani troops during Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War.

Six people, including a leader of the current ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), were executed after a trial in the ICT-BD. The other five were leaders of what is now the main opposition, Jamaat-e-Islami, which had opposed the 1971 independence.

The Muhammad Yunus-led interim government amended the ICT-BD law to enable it to try the leaders and officials of Awami League government on charges of crimes against humanity.