New Delhi: Former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who is facing a death sentence back home, has told Reuters that she and senior party colleagues plan to return from exile in India around December and surrender.
She and members of her Awami League aim to return voluntarily to the country they fled two years ago and present themselves in court, Hasina said.
“They may arrest me on my return, they may even kill me,” the 78-year-old leader said, in the nearly hour-long telephone interview late on Thursday and into Friday.
“Still, I have to go,” she said, adding: “My party leaders and workers are being subjected to tremendous repression. If death comes, I want it to come on my own soil, where my parents are buried and where their blood was shed.”
The Awami League has been banned in Bangladesh and she has been handed down the death sentence by a tribunal for alleged atrocities against protesters in 2024. She has denied the charges from exile.
Hasina was forced to flee Bangladesh in August that year after protesters marched towards her official residence in Dhaka.
Her return could send Bangladesh into turmoil as she still retains considerable support in the country. However, it could improve strained ties with
India, which deteriorated sharply after New Delhi refused to extradited her.
Hasina said she has not consulted with any foreign government on whether or when to return. Apart from her, Bangladesh’s former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal also faces a death sentence.
The authorities in Dhaka “want to take me back, they are repeatedly sending letters to India seeking to have me sent back,” Hasina said. “I will go myself.”
Neither the spokesperson for the Bangladesh government, nor anyone from the Indian side responded to her remarks.
“Cases have been filed against almost all of our leaders and workers, and many of them are in hiding,” Hasina told Reuters from her exile home in Delhi. “So I said that this time I am returning home, and one day, all of you should come. All together, we will all surrender in court.”
“I believe in justice and I feel that once proceedings start, it will be clear to the people how farcical the court is – and that is what I want to prove,” she said.
She had not been in touch with Dhaka over her plans to return, Hasina said. “Democracy, voting rights, the political rights of the Awami League and justice are not subjects for secret talks.”
She was not worried about jail time, Hasina said, noting that she had been arrested several times before.
“When a government works for a long time, mistakes can happen – no government is above error,” she said. “But the right to judge the good and bad, the right and wrong of a government belongs to the people. I leave that judgment to the people.”
She has held online meetings covering 125 of Bangladesh’s 300 parliamentary constituencies as part of efforts to reorganise the Awami League, she said.
“They may have convicted me, and I may not be able to contest elections,” she said. “But why should they suspend the Awami League? If we have done badly, let the people decide.”