Sheikh Hasina Seeks New Passport, Bangladesh Warns of Execution If She Returns

Passport bid for December return

Sheikh Hasina sought a new passport and national identity card to return to Bangladesh in December, more than two years after fleeing to India following a student-led uprising that forced her from power. Humaiun Kobir told Al Jazeera that Bangladesh would “work under the current extradition arrangements with India to pursue and get the terrorist Hasina handed over,” and he said Bangladesh does not give passports to terrorists who kill thousands of people and flee.

Kobir says no6 of 9 outlets reported it · not in AP News and 2 more▾

Bangladesh’s prosecutor Md Aminul Islam told reporters that “Sheikh Hasina has no option but to face the execution of the verdict,” if she returns home. Matrix Chambers, acting for Hasina, submitted the request through the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi, and the letter asked for the application to be processed “expeditiously” on the basis of her Bangladeshi nationality and obligations under “international human rights instruments.”

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Reporting for this sectionAl JazeeraAP News

Dhaka rejects, legal questions

Bangladesh rejected Hasina’s passport request and insisted she should return through extradition rather than as an ordinary traveler, with Humaiun Kobir saying, “She is a terrorist. She is a fugitive. There is an active extradition treaty between Bangladesh and India,” in Dhaka.

+2Bangladesh rejects8 of 11 outlets reported it · not in Daily Pioneer and 2 more▾

Salahuddin Ahmed said the foreign and law ministries were looking into whether there was any legal basis for the applications and whether Hasina was legally entitled to apply for the documents, while the Times of India reported Bangladesh denied the request because it does not provide “passport to a terrorist”.

A Bangladesh High Commission official told Asia Times that the mission had received the correspondence but had not established whether Hasina had personally authorized the lawyers, saying, “Before treating the request as official, we need confirmation that she authorized the firm to act on her behalf.”

The dispute also hinged on the legal backdrop described by Asia Times, including the Bangladesh Passport Order of 1973 and the question of whether Hasina’s death sentence fits the law’s conditions for refusing a passport to someone convicted within the preceding five years of an offense involving moral turpitude and sentenced to at least two years in prison.

Reporting for this sectionAP NewsAsia Times

Execution risk and political stakes

Hasina’s return plan carried the prospect of execution, because Md Aminul Islam said she would be executed if she returns home, while Al Jazeera also described the death sentence in absentia over crimes against humanity over a deadly crackdown on student-led protests in 2024 that she denies.

Reuters reporting cited by SRN News said Hasina planned to return in December and surrender, and it quoted her saying, “If death is my destiny, I would rather die on the soil of my own country, among my own people.”

Analysts quoted by Al Jazeera said Hasina’s passport request could be a way to keep her Awami League politically relevant, with Zillur Rahman arguing, “I think she knows what her fate is. But what she wants is to keep Awami League leaders and activists politically engaged,” while Jon F Danilowicz said, “There is zero chance that Hasina will return to Bangladesh in December.”

The AP reported that Bangladesh’s government had been seeking her extradition from India and had earlier dismissed suggestions she needed new identification documents to return home, leaving the next step tied to whether India would act on Bangladesh’s extradition request and whether Bangladesh would process the passport and national identity card applications.

Reporting for this sectionAl JazeeraSRN News