State Minister for Foreign Affairs Humayun Kabir has described as “laughable” the question of giving a passport or travel pass to ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who is in Delhi under a death sentence handed down in a case of crimes against humanity during the July uprising.
Answering a journalist’s question on Thursday, he said Bangladesh wants her handed over under its extradition treaty with India, and called Sheikh Hasina a “fugitive terrorist”.
“Is she coming to visit her in-laws in Rangpur, that I should give her a passport and she comes in on a passport? We have an active extradition treaty to catch terrorists, to catch criminals,” he said.
The state minister answered reporters’ questions at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport after seeing off Liu Haixing, minister of the International Department of the Communist Party of China, who was visiting Dhaka.
Humayun Kabir was asked whether Awami League president Hasina, who has announced she will return in December, had applied for a passport or a travel pass.
In reply, he said he had returned home on Thursday from the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua and Barbuda, so he was not yet aware of the matter. He said the very question of a passport or travel pass struck him as “laughable”.
Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal sentenced Sheikh Hasina to death in absentia last November on charges of ordering a deadly crackdown to suppress the 2024 student movement. According to a United Nations report, about 1400 people died during that movement. Sheikh Hasina, who lives in exile, has denied ordering the killings, and her lawyers have also questioned the death toll.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report