Dhaka, April 9: A special Bangladeshi tribunal on Thursday sentenced two former policemen to death for their role in the killing of a university student in 2024 that intensified a street protest eventually toppling the then Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government.
The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) sentenced the two former policemen — assistant sub-inspector Amir Hossain and constable Sujan Chandra Roy Abu — in the crimes against humanity case for killing Abu Sayeed on the state-run Rangour University campus on July 16, 2024.
The tribunal also handed down life imprisonment to three other former policemen and sentenced 25 others, including the university’s vice chancellor, to different prison terms.
Sayeed, 23, was seen in videos and photos grabbed hours before his death with his arms spread wide, in a gesture of challenging the police.
“They will be hanged by neck until their death,” chair of ICT-BD Justice Nazrul Islam Chowdhury pronounced.
The convicts include Rangpur’s former police commissioner, police officers, university teachers, officials and doctors, and student activists belonging to the now disbanded Awami League’s student wing.
The two former policemen awarded the capital punishment are in jail while the three officers who received the life term are on the run along with most other convicts. Only six convicts were tried in person.
Defence lawyer Azizur Rahman alleged that “no sign of bullet shots” were found in Sayeed’s body or clothes he wore at the time of his death.
“Abu Sayeed sacrificed his life to free the country from autocratic rule (and) 30 people were convicted,” chief prosecutor Aminul Islam told reporters.
He, however, said the tribunal heard the witness statements and completed the trial process before his appointment as the ICT-BD chief prosecutor.
According to the ICT law, originally enacted to try hardened collaborators of Pakistani troops during 1971 Liberation War, convicts who faced the trial in person could get a chance to challenge the verdict before the Supreme Court.
The ICT-BD had sentenced Hasina to death on November 17 last year, finding her guilty of incitement, instigation, and ordering the killing of 1,400 people during the student-led violent street protest called the July Uprising that toppled her government on August 5, 2024.
Hasina fled to India after her government was toppled and has been charged with committing ‘crimes against humanity’ to tame the protesters. (PTI)
