SHEIKH Hasina Wajid, the former prime minister of Bangladesh, has been tried, convicted and sentenced to death for acts committed when in office. Denial of due process and the sentence of death should give us pause. No matter what the offence, neither is to be celebrated.
The verdict has been handed down by the International Crimes Tribunal, a special domestic court set up by her with handpicked judges to sort out those she wanted punished. She succeeded, and several men were hanged on trumped-up charges in show trials.
Times change, and with them the crosshairs of kangaroo courts and the loyalties of those who man them. It is a lesson for all who confuse alliances with friendships and mistake servility for loyalty: by the time they learn, it is too late, both for them and the institutions they torpedo.
The accusation against Hasina was a deadly crackdown on the student protests of 2024; the charge was crimes against humanity.
The immunity of the few is made possible by the complicity of the many and the indifference of all those who watch but say or do nothing
The episode put one in mind of the events of Friday, October 16, 1998. In a London clinic, an 82-year-old man was recuperating from a minor back operation. Around 11pm, there was a knock on the door. The man was woken up. He was informed of his rights. The order of his arrest was read out. International law turned a corner.
The man was General Augusto Pinochet. The coup he pulled had led to the death of Chile’s popularly elected President, Salvador Allende. For 17 years, he had ruled with an iron fist. Compelled to step down after a referendum unexpectedly went against him, he sought and got watertight immunity.
A belt was added to braces. He was made a senator for life and secured more immunity. Ever careful to make his immunities ironclad, when travelling to England, he became head of a diplomatic mission to negotiate an arms deal with the United Kingdom.
Accused of many crimes against humanity – including conspiracy to torture and assassination of critics and opponents – he took no chances. But what he underestimated was the growing reach of law, fearless investigators and independent judges. A chink in the armour was found. An extradition warrant was issued by a Spanish magistrate. International law was its basis. After a few ups and downs, the House of Lords (then the highest court of England) came through.
It was not an easy case. As Ariel Dorfman, author of The Pinochet Case: Origins, Progress and Implications, wrote in the New York Review of Books, no precedent existed to answer two important questions.
First, could a foreign court pass judgment against a former head of state of another country for crimes against humanity, committed in his own country and against his own people? Second, did his status as a former head of state and his presence in England on a diplomatic mission guarantee him immunity from prosecution anywhere in the world?
The court ruled that Britain and Spain had the right to put Pinochet on trial. Given the nature of his crimes, he had no immunity. He was to be extradited.
The real heroes of this triumph of international law were ordinary people who, against all odds, had refused to give up and had pursued justice for the disappeared and the dead.
In the end, politics prevailed. The governments of Spain, UK and Chile made a deal. The judiciary of Chile underwrote it by promising to try Pinochet, but it never did. Pinochet escaped trial, first in Spain, and later in Chile for faux health reasons.
Sheikh Hasina Wajid too, may yet be able to beat extradition.
But all has not been in vain. Cases against several others were reopened, and prosecutions commenced. Pinochet died in his bed, but till he did, he lived in fear.
Others, too, began to beware the reach of the law. In 1999, Franjo Tudman, of Croatia, fearing being indicted for crimes during the Yugoslavian conflict, decided not to go to Germany for treatment.
In 2002, Henry Kissinger, cancelled a trip to Brazil; in February, 2011 George W. Bush aborted a trip to Switzerland, suspecting that he may be questioned for authorising waterboarding; and in 2023, after being indicted by the ICC, Russian President Vladimir Putin decided not to travel to South Africa.
While this may sound upbeat, one message from the authors of books on Pinochet’s murderous rule and his comeuppance is that the immunity of the few is made possible by the complicity of the many and the indifference of all those who watch but say or do nothing.
The other and more significant take is that absolute rulers, guilty of crimes against humanity, no longer have impunity from the long reach of the law. To use an oft-quoted expression, “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice”.
The writer is a distinguished lawyer
Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2025
