Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was sentenced to six months in prison on Wednesday by a special tribunal after being found guilty of contempt of court over a leaked phone call in which she allegedly threatened the judiciary, according to local media.
The verdict was handed down by the International Crimes Tribunal-1 (ICT), a three-member bench chaired by Justice Md Golam Mortuza Mozumder, The Dhaka Tribune reported. The sentence will come into effect from the day of her arrest or voluntary surrender, the tribunal said.
The case relates to an audio clip purportedly of a phone conversation between Hasina and Shakil Akand Bulbul, a political figure from Gobindaganj in Gaibandha and a former leader of the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student wing of the Awami League.
The call, leaked in October last year, features a voice identified as Hasina stating: “227 cases have been filed against me, so I have obtained a licence to kill 227 people.”
Prosecutors argued that the remark amounted to contempt of court, asserting it posed a direct threat to the judicial process and was an attempt to intimidate those involved in ongoing war crimes trials connected to last year’s unrest.
Alongside Hasina, the tribunal sentenced Bulbul to two months’ imprisonment under the same contempt charges.
This marks Hasina’s first conviction since she fled Bangladesh nearly 11 months ago, following her ousting as prime minister in August 2024 after weeks of widespread protests.
The movement, led by the Students Against Discrimination (SAD), initially called for reform of government job quotas but quickly evolved into a larger anti-government uprising.
According to a United Nations report, an estimated 1,400 people were killed in clashes between mid-July and mid-August 2024, during the peak of the violence. The Awami League-led government was forced out of power amid escalating public pressure and international concern.
Hasina fled to India on 5 August. Since then, several of her former ministers and senior government officials have faced legal action over the deadly crackdown that accompanied the uprising.
On 8 August, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus was appointed head of Bangladesh’s interim administration.
The Awami League has not yet responded publicly to the verdict.
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