Ex-Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina has been found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death following a trial in her home country.
She was convicted of ordering a deadly crackdown on a student-led uprising last year.
Hasina, 78, is the aunt of Tulip Siddiq, the Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate.
The ruling is the most dramatic legal action against a former Bangladeshi leader since independence in 1971 and comes months ahead of parliamentary elections expected to be held in early February.
Hasina's Awami League party has been barred from contesting and it is feared that Monday's verdict could stoke fresh unrest ahead of the vote.
The International Crimes Tribunal, Bangladesh's domestic war crimes court located in the capital Dhaka, delivered the verdict amid tight security and in Hasina’s absence.
She fled to India in August 2024 at the height of the uprising against her government.
Hasina got a life sentence under charges for crimes against humanity and the death sentence for the killing of several people during the uprising.
Cheers and applause broke out in the packed courtroom as the death sentence was pronounced.
The verdict can be appealed in the Supreme Court.
But Hasina's son and adviser, Sajeeb Wazed, told Reuters on the eve of the verdict that they would not appeal unless a democratically elected government took office with the Awami League’s participation.
Reacting to the verdict, Hasina said the ruling had come from a “rigged tribunal” established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate.
“They are biased and politically motivated,” she said in an e-mailed statement sent to media outlets soon after the verdict.
“In their distasteful call for the death penalty, they reveal the brazen and murderous intent of extremist figures within the interim government to remove Bangladesh’s last elected prime minister, and to nullify the Awami League as a political force,” she said.
During the trial, prosecutors told the court that they had uncovered evidence of her direct command to use lethal force to suppress a student-led uprising in July and August 2024.
According to a United Nations report, up to 1,400 people may have been killed during the protests between July 15 and August 5, 2024, with thousands more injured — most of them by gunfire from security forces — in what was the worst violence in Bangladesh since its 1971 war of independence.
