Sheikh Hasina Vows December Return Despite Death Sentence

Ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina has announced she will return to Bangladesh in December despite a death sentence hanging over her. She has applied for a new passport and national identity card in order to return, but the government has turned down her passport request. Sheikh Hasina said, “Whatever fate awaits me, I will return to my people. I cannot stay away while my beloved countrymen are suffering.”

The International Crimes Tribunal sentenced her to death in absentia on 17 November 2025 over the violent crackdown on the 2024 student-led protests. According to the United Nations, more than 1,400 people were killed in that uprising. Hasina has denied the charges.

The tribunal’s chief prosecutor has said the sentence will be carried out if Hasina returns. He advised her that if she genuinely wishes to return, she should ask the Indian authorities to facilitate her return under the extradition treaty.

Meanwhile, Shahab Enam Khan, professor at the Department of International Relations of Jahangirnagar University, sees the announcement as “more of a political tool than a travel plan”. Speaking on Al Jazeera English’s ‘Inside Story’ programme, he said it would re-energise the activists of the banned Awami League, stop the succession debate inside the party and put Dhaka–Delhi relations to the test, while letting her present herself as a wronged leader ready to face her accusers.

Shahab Enam Khan added that the 30-day appeal deadline has passed and her legal options are nearly exhausted. The only legal route, he said, would begin with surrender, followed by whatever review the court permits, and ultimately presidential clemency under Article 49 of the Constitution. But he warned that even in custody she would become a rallying point and a source of polarisation, and that her stance would also delay the Awami League’s own renewal.

Sanjay Kumar Bhardwaj, professor at the Centre for South Asian Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, said Hasina is confident she would receive a mass welcome if she returned — as she did when she came back in 2007. He said her presence in Delhi has become an obstacle to building healthy India–Bangladesh relations, and that the solution must be found politically, not through legal frameworks alone.

Taqbir Huda, a human rights lawyer at the University of Oxford, said that just as the 2024 crackdown was a grave human rights atrocity, the trial that convicted Hasina in absentia was itself riddled with fair-trial concerns. The passport issue, he argued, is a red herring — as a Bangladeshi national, Hasina does not need a passport to return; both sides are performing for their own audiences.

Taqbir Huda warned that her return could be “extremely dangerous” for Bangladesh’s peace and security, because she still has millions of supporters who could take to the streets at her call. In his words, Hasina is weaponising precisely that threat. Earlier she spoke of a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC); now she has shifted strategy, saying she is ready to return and die in her own country.

Sheikh Hasina fled to India in August 2024 in the face of a mass uprising. Since then, India has refused Dhaka’s repeated extradition requests, which has become a source of tension between the two neighbours. The Awami League’s activities are currently banned and its registration suspended; after February’s elections, a BNP government led by Tarique Rahman came to power. Whether Hasina will genuinely return remains unclear — and analysts are divided on the question.