Sheikh Hasina, who is in India, says she will return in December along with other party members
Bangladesh’s former prime minister, who is in self-imposed exile in India after her ouster in an uprising, says she could be killed in her country, where she plans to surrender before a court in December.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and members of her Awami League party will surrender when they return from India, she told Reuters late Thursday. The 78-year-old was the South Asian nation’s longest serving leader.
“They may arrest me on my return, they may even kill me,” Hasina said in a telephone interview with the news agency.
She vowed to return to Bangladesh this year in an interview last month.
After Hasina fled to India, Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) handed down a death sentence for her in absentia for alleged crimes against humanity during a crackdown on the student-led uprising. She has denied the charges.
“I have to go,” she said in the interview, adding that members of her party are being subjected to “tremendous repression” in Bangladesh.
“If death comes, I want it to come on my own soil, where my parents are buried and where their blood was shed.”
Hasina is the daughter of Bangladesh’s first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was assassinated in a 1975 military coup. Her mother, brothers, and several other relatives were also assassinated in their Dhaka residence.
Hasina said Dhaka has been sending letters to India to send her back. “I will go myself,” she said.
Hasina’s father was the founding leader of the Bangladesh liberation movement. He was known as the ‘father of the nation’ before the interim government of Muhammad Yunus, which took charge after Hasina’s ouster, removed all references of the kind to him.
Hasina, who dominated the country’s politics for decades and is credited with an economic turnaround, ruled for around 20 years, although not continuously.
