Sumon is not the only accused in these proceedings charged over events at which he was not present. Md Mohiuddin Bachchu, who formerly represented a Chittagong city constituency in parliament for the Awami League faces charges linked not only to the 16 July deaths but also to those of 18 July, when three more men were shot dead. Yet his passport, too, shows he was out of Bangladesh at the time. He departed on 13 July and did not come back until 25 July 2024. Both men were however present in Bangladesh on 4 August 2024 when they were also charged with offences, though no one was killed on that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Copy-and-paste testimony<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The absence of two of the accused from the country is not the only problem with the Chittagong case. Human Rights Watch has found that<\/a>, the tribunal\u2019s prosecutors and judges are relying on witness testimonies recorded by investigating officers from which whole passages are duplicated word for word in multiple statements attributed to different witnesses, raising questions about their genuineness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The human rights organisation stated that one six lines long passage \u2013 which asserts that seven named politicians used \u201cAwami League terrorists\u201d to kill several persons through their \u201cplanning, financing, provocation and instructions\u201d \u2013 is repeated almost verbatim in fourteen different statements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then a second, lengthier passage turns up in near-identical form in another nine statements. According to this passage, six of the accused repeatedly made \u201cprovocative statements,\u201d labelled the protesters \u201cmilitants, terrorists, and communal agitators,\u201d and directed the remaining sixteen accused to \u201cuse maximum force to suppress the movement and explicitly ordered the killing and torture of innocent, unarmed, peaceful students and the public.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAllegations based on duplicated witness statements \u2026 show the lack of a credible justice process, which will once again fail victims, their families, and all Bangladeshis,\u201d said Meenakshi Ganguly, the deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ICT prosecutors have not responded to our questions asking why Sumon and Bacchu were charged with offences when they were not in the country, but in response to the claim of identical passages in multiple statements, the ICT chief prosecutor argued<\/a> at a press conference that it was \u201cnatural\u201d for the witnesses\u2019 statements to be the same, and that \u201cconsistency is actually what is desirable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For critics, the Chittagong case is not an aberration. A growing number of observers suggest that politics has come to pervade many of the ICT prosecutions, with Awami League politicians swept into prosecutions whether or not there is sufficient evidence linking them to the alleged crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s easy for one side or another to claim a case is politically motivated\u201d said Thom Dyke, a barrister at Deka Chambers, a lawyer for Fazle Karim Chowdhury, one of the accused in the case, who lays more blame at the architecture of the law and the restricted rights of the accused. \u201cThe real problem in Mr Chowdhury\u2019s case is much more fundamental. The legislation which established the ICT has never complied with the basic standards required by international human rights law. Those charged are stripped of the constitutional rights otherwise afforded to all Bangladeshis. The law underpinning the ICT breaches obligations Bangladesh agreed to when it acceded to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights a quarter of a century ago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The problem does not just involve<\/a> Awami League politicians, but also those who are closely aligned to the party. On 17 August 2026, ICT prosecutors asked the tribunal to arrest three senior journalists known for their sympathy towards the ousted Awami League \u2013 Mozammel Babu, Shyamal Dutta and Farzana Rupa \u2013 on crimes against humanity allegations. The allegations centre on the questions and remarks they made at a press conference given by Sheikh Hasina on 14 July 2024. The ICT duly agreed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That press conference became a defining moment of the protests. It was there that Hasina appeared to equate the protesters with the \u201cgrandchildren of Razakars,\u201d a term for those who collaborated with the Pakistan army during the 1971 war of independence. The remark drove students onto the streets in far greater numbers that same night, chanting slogans that turned the insult back on her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked at a press conference why the journalists should be arrested, prosecutor Gazi Monawar Hossain Tamim said: \u201cHolding press conferences, or asking questions at press conferences, is the duty of journalists. But during that period, we saw that certain journalists would attend the then prime minister\u2019s press conferences, and the statements they made were not actually questions at all. They were praise of the then prime minister, and a kind of provocative instigation aimed at getting her to say certain things. That is why these offences were committed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, Dutta asked no question at the press conference. And whilst Babu did ask a question, he spoke of the protesting students as \u201cvictims,\u201d not as targets. Indeed, Hasina broke in to agree with him: \u201cThat\u2019s exactly the case, there\u2019s no reason to be mad at them, they go with the trend.\u201d The question Rupa asked was the one on everyone\u2019s mind: \u201cWhether Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will keep the quota or not keep the quota?\u201d That was a perfectly ordinary question for a journalist to put to a head of government \u2013 when there were large scale protests of students against the 30 percent quota of civil service jobs that were given to relatives of those who fought in the country\u2019s 1971 war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe use of an International Crimes Tribunal to prosecute journalists for their professional conduct sets an extremely disturbing precedent for press freedom in Bangladesh,\u201d the Commonwealth Journalist Association said in response<\/a> to the arrests. \u201cJournalists must be held accountable for genuine criminal acts where credible evidence exists, but they cannot be criminalised simply for asking questions, reporting events or being perceived as politically sympathetic to one side or another.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the journalists stand accused of prompting Hasina\u2019s \u201crazakar\u201d remark, Muhammed Zafar Iqbal stands accused of echoing it. Widely regarded as Bangladesh\u2019s leading writer of science fiction and children\u2019s books, Iqbal is a former professor at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology and a prominent advocate of science education, who survived a knife attack by an Islamist militant on the university campus in March 2018. He now lives outside the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On 16 September 2026, prosecutors filed formal charges against Iqbal and seven others. The charges allege conspiracy, incitement, abetment and other inhumane acts linked to attacks on protesters in and around the Dhaka University campus. The tribunal accepted the charges on 20 September and issued a warrant for Iqbal and the others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The case against him rests on an excerpt<\/a> of an article, dated 14 July 2024, the day of Hasina\u2019s press conference, which was circulated on social media: \u201cDhaka University is my university, my beloved university. But I think I will never want to go to this university again; whenever I see the students I will think, perhaps these are those razakars! \u2026. And for as many days as I remain alive, I do not want to see the face of any razakar. There is only one life, after all \u2014 why, in that life, should I have to see razakars all over again?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The prosecution\u2019s case hinges on this passage. It also accuses him of refusing to support the protesters and of staying silent about the killings, neither of which is a crime. The piece is undoubtedly polemical: it implies that many of the students protesting at Dhaka University were, in effect, heirs to those who collaborated with the Pakistan army in 1971. But it does not call for, or even hint at, violence against anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iqbal is not the only prominent supporter of the 1971 war crimes trials, and critic of Islamist politics, now facing prosecution at the same tribunal. On 27 July 2026, the ICT took cognisance of formal charges against 41 accused<\/a> over a case that predates the July uprising by more than eleven years: the killings that followed a rally by the hardline Islamist group Hefazat-e-Islam at Shapla Chattar square in the centre of Dhaka on 5 May 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prosecutors say 58 people were killed in the cities of Dhaka, Narayanganj, Chittagong and Cumilla. The events took place more than eleven years before the protests that brought down Hasina\u2019s government.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIntrinsic weaknesses of the ICT law<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Journalists charged for asking questions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Prosecuting a polemic<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Charged for opposing Hefazet-e-Islam<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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