An estimated 1,400 individuals died within the July rebellion of 2024, which led to Sheikh Hasina’s ouster on August 5, 2024. To contribute to accountability, reconciliation, and a way of justice for the Bangladeshi individuals, the Worldwide Crimes Tribunal (ICT) was revived.
Created in 2010 primarily based on the 1973 ICT act, the tribunal was designed to prosecute atrocities dedicated in the course of the 1971 Liberation Battle. It was closely criticized – particularly in 2011-2012 however all through her tenure – for being utilized by Hasina to place opposition figures on trial for 1971-era crimes. The ICT was seen as politically instrumentalized and missing due course of.
This 12 months, three journalists and a secular author had been arrested and accused earlier than the ICT of crimes towards humanity via incitement in reference to their reporting. They’ve been imprisoned for nearly two years now on a wave of homicide fees within the common courts. Human rights organizations have condemned the homicide fees and have raised issues that the tribunal might now be used towards figures related to the previous governing order, together with journalists.
“The crimes dedicated towards the student-led motion in July and August 2024, by which a whole bunch had been killed, demand a correct accounting, and people accountable ought to face justice,” stated Toby Cadman, a human rights lawyer and former advisor to the ICT’s Chief Prosecutor. “The victims and the nation are entitled to a course of directed at reality, justice and reconciliation reasonably than retribution, and that makes it all of the extra necessary that these trials meet the very best requirements of due course of – correctly particularized fees, well timed disclosure, efficient entry to counsel, and significant judicial evaluation of detention.”
Journalists Entangled in Authorized Circumstances
4 Bangladeshi journalists – Farzana Rupa, her husband Shakil Ahmed, Mozammel Babu, and Shyamal Dutta – and author Shahriar Kabir have confronted legal proceedings linked to the rebellion. All have been imprisoned since 2024.
Rupa and Shakil had been initially arrested at Dhaka airport on August 21, 2024, in reference to a homicide case regarding the dying of a garment employee named Fazlul. Within the following months, they had been produced earlier than the Chief Metropolitan Justice of the Peace’s Court docket a number of instances in reference to new circumstances. Rupa reportedly faces 9 homicide circumstances, whereas Shakil faces six.
Mozammel Babu, Shyamal Dutta, and Shahriar Kabir had been arrested in September 2024 beneath related uprising-related homicide fees.
In a Day by day Star interview revealed on November 21, 2024, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, then head of the interim authorities, acknowledged that the homicide circumstances filed towards journalists had been “executed rapidly” and distanced the federal government from the fees.
His then legislation adviser, Asif Nazrul, went additional at a press-freedom roundtable on June 26, 2025, disclosing that 266 journalists had been sued. He confused that the circumstances “weren’t initiated by the federal government – they had been filed by peculiar residents,” including, “[W]e have made it clear that no arrests ought to be made except there may be substantial proof.”
The Bangladesh Nationalist Occasion (BNP), which got here to energy in February 2026, made its personal express pledge in its election manifesto to make sure press freedom by reviewing the Digital Safety Act, stopping assaults on media retailers, withdrawing politically motivated circumstances, and making certain justice for tortured and murdered journalists. But neither dedication has translated into reduction for the 4 journalists and one author.
Since their arrest in 2024, relations of these accused have filed quite a few bail functions, citing lack of proof, an absence of a prima facie case, and the superior age or poor well being of a number of defendants – Shahriar Kabir, aged 75, and Babu, who’s affected by most cancers. Bail functions for Kabir and Babu have been constantly rejected. On Could 11, 2026, the Dhaka Excessive Court docket granted interim bail to Rupa in six circumstances and to Shakil in 5. The Appellate Division subsequently suspended the bail granted to Rupa and Shakil.
Earlier this 12 months, in a major escalation, Rupa, Babu, Dutta, and Kabir had been all arrested in separate ICT circumstances. The primary case issues Ekattor TV’s protection and a subsequent documentary on the 2013 Shapla Chattar crackdown, implicating Rupa, Babu, and Kabir. A second ICT continuing, initiated in August 2026 regarding the July rebellion of 2024, named Rupa, Babu, and Dutta. On the second case’s listening to on August 25, 2026, they had been arrested in that case as properly.
The journalists now face proceedings on two tracks. Atypical legal fees run via common courts, the place bail might be granted. The ICT proceedings are separate, ruled by a definite authorized framework, and contain allegations of crimes towards humanity.
The uncertainty has taken a toll on the households of these detained. Rupa and Shakil’s daughter, Monphool, was solely 17 when each of her dad and mom had been arrested. She has spent the previous two years working for his or her launch, abandoning her personal schooling to advocate for them.
Monphool described falling asleep and waking up every day “asking the identical query – whether or not at the moment would be the day my mom or father comes house.” She lives in a state of “fixed worry that can’t be put down. Atypical conversations, home-cooked meals collectively, birthdays, issues that the majority households typically take as a right, have been misplaced.”
“Ready, each single day, has modified me,” Monphool stated. “Circumstances like my dad and mom’ have turn out to be a sample in Bangladesh for much too lengthy and plenty of different households have already skilled what I’m going via. I really feel like I’ve misplaced my childhood to one thing that I’ve no management over, I solely hope that it’ll come to an finish.”
The ICT as Political Instrument: A Recurring Political Sample
Shifting from a number of homicide circumstances to fees of crimes towards humanity is a major escalation. Below the 1973 Act, crimes towards humanity require acts dedicated as a part of a widespread or systematic assault towards a civilian inhabitants. Portraying a protest as “provocative,” producing a tv documentary, or asking a chief minister a pointed query at a press convention in the course of the July rebellion doesn’t fall inside this ambit.
Crucially, Bangladesh’s legislation traditionally lacked the necessary requirement to show that an alleged crime was a part of such a “widespread or systematic assault,” as Article 7 of the Rome Statute calls for. Worldwide authorized students, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty Worldwide flagged this hole in the course of the 2010–2011 proceedings, however the Bangladesh Supreme Court docket’s 2013 judgment in Abdul Quader Molla v. Authorities of Bangladesh (arising from ICT-BD Case No. 02 of 2012) declined to include the brink.
That leaves the tribunal free to strive crimes towards humanity by home requirements incompatible with worldwide legislation. Whereas the interim authorities moved to amend the ICT Ordinance to align statutory definitions with the Rome Statute, how these authorized requirements are executed in follow stays contested.
Procedural weaknesses compound the issue. Interlocutory orders on arrest, detention, or bail can’t be appealed; the Structure suspends elementary protections, together with the proper to a speedy, public trial, for anybody charged beneath the Act. As a result of the Act units no distinct sentencing thresholds, a documentary producer and a perpetrator of mass atrocities face the identical most penalty: dying.
Protection attorneys, in the meantime, report receiving nothing in writing corroborating the allegations even after their purchasers are proven arrested, with months passing earlier than a cost sheet – and an actual protection – turns into attainable.
Classes From Rwanda
As Cadman put it, true justice requires “prosecutorial self-discipline.” Which means, he defined, “Fees ought to be introduced solely the place there’s a sturdy evidential foundation for them. A case introduced with out that basis doesn’t merely fail; it weakens the circumstances that need to succeed, and it invitations the very skepticism the Tribunal can least afford.”
The 1973 Act was constructed to prosecute the Pakistan Military and its collaborators for 1971 wartime atrocities. Stretching that equipment to succeed in a decade-old broadcast or a reporter’s query transforms a transitional justice mechanism right into a instrument for peculiar political disputes.
Importantly, worldwide jurisprudence has already handled the query of journalists and crimes towards humanity.
“On journalists particularly, worldwide legislation is settled and it’s demanding,” stated Cadman. “The Rwanda tribunal’s media jurisprudence establishes that legal responsibility doesn’t connect to reporting, commentary or editorial line, nonetheless partisan. RTLM’s broadcasters had been convicted as a result of they broadcast the names, addresses and automobile registrations of recognized people in order that they could possibly be hunted down and killed, whereas the killing was underway – and even on these information the Appeals Chamber in Nahimana reversed a considerable a part of the trial judgment, holding that hate speech falling in need of a direct name to commit the crime isn’t incitement, and that seniority at a broadcaster is not any substitute for proof of the accused’s personal contribution, intent and information.”
Cadman concluded: “…[F]or crimes towards humanity the speech should moreover type a part of the widespread or systematic assault charged. That’s the threshold. It ought to be utilized in Bangladesh as it might be anyplace else.”
Justice, Not Vendetta – Towards a Principled Customary
Bangladesh’s political transition presents a possibility to interrupt the cycle by which every ruling coalition criminalizes its predecessors. A sturdy democratic transition requires steady establishments whose guidelines apply uniformly, slender evidence-based prosecutions of grave violations, and a transparent distinction between perpetrators, political associates, and journalists.
Bangladesh should undertake a principled method. Crimes-against-humanity fees towards media actors ought to be pursued solely the place proof establishes internationally acknowledged modes of duty. The place allegations concern routine journalistic conduct, courts ought to order launch beneath commonplace bail provisions, keep away from serial charge-filing, and allow worldwide observers to watch proceedings.
The transitional justice challenge needn’t turn out to be an instrument of revenge. Bangladesh had an opportunity to repair this in 2012, and didn’t achieve this. As famous, reforms since have moved to align the ICT framework with worldwide requirements – however whether or not the tribunal enforces these thresholds in follow stays the actual take a look at. The tribunal’s logic will finally be judged by whether or not it declines to weigh a documentary or a press convention query on the identical scale as mass atrocity.