The killing of approximately 1,400 people during Bangladesh's July-August 2024 uprising created

an undeniable accountability demand. The OHCHR fact-finding mission, reporting in February 2025,

documented that the deaths were attributable overwhelmingly to state security forces acting

under command authority. Sheikh Hasina fled to India on August 5, 2024, one day before an

interim government led by Muhammad Yunus was installed. The BNP, returning to power under Prime

Minister Tarique Rahman on February 17, 2026, inherited both the trials and their legitimacy

deficit.

The ICT-1 Conviction: Legal Basis and Gaps

ICT-1 issued a death sentence against Hasina in absentia on November 17, 2025. The legal

vehicle is the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act 1973, last amended in 2024. The Act

predates the Rome Statute by 25 years and lacks several procedural guarantees now standard

under customary international law: no automatic right of civilian Supreme Court appeal for

in-absentia convictions, no mandatory full evidentiary disclosure to absent defendants, and

no provision requiring the prosecution to locate or notify the accused through international

channels before proceeding.

The 2024 amendment broadened the definition of crimes against humanity, a change critics argue

was made with the specific Hasina prosecution in mind, raising retroactivity concerns under

the principle of nullum crimen sine lege.

The Prosecution's Internal Credibility Crisis

In March 2026, audio recordings emerged allegedly capturing an ICT prosecutor soliciting

approximately 1 crore taka from the family of a detained suspect. The prosecutor was placed

on administrative leave pending investigation. The episode is significant not because corruption

inside a single prosecution automatically invalidates a conviction but because it provided

credible evidence of the institutional pathology that international observers had already

flagged in generic terms. Combined with the OHCHR's February 2025 procedural concerns, the

recording shifted the evidentiary burden: defenders of the trial now carry the weight of

demonstrating systemic integrity rather than presuming it.

The Kingsley Napley Notice: 37 Specific Deficits

On March 30, 2026, UK law firm Kingsley Napley served a 37-point fair-trial violation notice

on the ICT prosecution. The notice, prepared for defence interests, catalogued deficits in six

main categories: inadequate evidence disclosure (8 points), restrictions on defence access

(7 points), absence of appeal rights for in-absentia convictions (6 points), inadequate

witness protection for defence witnesses (6 points), structural defects in in-absentia

procedures (5 points), and other procedural gaps (5 points).

The LSE South Asia Centre characterised the proceedings on March 30, 2026 as "testing the

limits of international criminal justice norms," noting that the hybrid domestic-international

framing of ICT-1 creates expectations of international-standard compliance that the Act's

text does not fully satisfy.

Accountability Versus Due Process: The BNP Governance Dilemma

The BNP government faces a structural dilemma. Proceeding with flawed trials risks producing

convictions that the international community refuses to recognise, undermining Bangladesh's

reputation as a rule-of-law state at a moment when it is seeking increased foreign investment

and IMF support. Halting or restructuring the trials risks appearing to shelter political

opponents under a due-process pretext.

Three reform pathways are available. First, Bangladesh could invite a UN Special Adviser on

transitional justice to audit ICT procedures against Rome Statute standards and publish

recommendations. Second, the 1973 Act could be amended again to provide an automatic appeal

pathway and mandatory evidentiary disclosure rules consistent with ICCPR Article 14. Third,

the government could seek Hasina's extradition from India, which would convert the in-absentia

conviction to a live trial with full procedural requirements, reducing international objections

at the cost of diplomatic friction with New Delhi.

Policy Implications

Transitional justice credibility is indivisible from governance quality. A Bangladesh that

convicts a former prime minister under contested procedures does not gain the rule-of-law

dividend that a transparent, internationally recognised process would provide. The BNP

government's first 100 days have been defined partly by the ICT proceedings; the next 100

days will be defined by whether it treats the Kingsley Napley notice and the prosecution

corruption scandal as a governance crisis requiring structural remedy or as political noise

to be managed.