Sajeeb Wazed slams Bangladesh interim govt after Hasina’s death sentence: 'A political coup'

Wazed alleged that laws were altered specifically to expedite Hasina’s trial.

Sajeeb Wazed, son of ousted Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has launched a sweeping attack on the country’s interim government, calling his mother’s conviction and the ongoing political transition part of an “undemocratic” and unlawful power grab.

The unrest that toppled Hasina’s government was not spontaneous but politically engineered, claims Wazed during an interview with ANI in Virginia. “There was some mishandling of the protests initially. The protests turned violent. Our government tried to stop the protests. There was certainly political motivation to it,” he said.

His remarks come days after Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal-1 sentenced Hasina to death, accusing her of orchestrating violence and mass killings during the July-August 2024 uprising.

Chief Prosecutor Mohammad Tajul Islam, during the hearing that afternoon, described Hasina as the “mastermind and principal architect” of the crackdown and branded the Awami League a “fascist party.”

Wazed, however, counters these claims, alleging that the interim administration, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, has been in power for nearly 18 months without public mandate.

“There has been an unelected government in power for the last 1.5 years. Everything has been done undemocratically,” he said. “We have tens of thousands of political prisoners. Over 100 Members of Parliament are in detention with no investigation or trials. At this point, it is definitely a political coup.”

He also accused Yunus of avoiding elections due to a lack of public support.

“If Muhammad Yunus was popular, then why would he not have just held an election and then run the country with legitimacy? He has held on to power for a year and a half because he has absolutely zero popular support,” Wazed said.

Hasina's son also dismissed the student-backed National Citizen Party (NCP) as electorally irrelevant, noting it was polling at only 2% in surveys. “They’ve never gone above 2%. Yunus and the student party have almost no popularity, so they’ve held on to power without an election,” he said.

Furthermore, Wazed slammed the interim government’s foreign-policy tilt, alleging both the Yunus administration and the BNP were pivoting toward Beijing.

“The Yunus regime has been trying to get much closer to China. They’ve had prominent state visits to China. Even our opposition, BNP, has been making direct overtures to China,” he said. He said that under Hasina, relations with China, India and the US were evenly balanced and the Belt and Road Initiative was treated solely as an economic programme.

Wazed argued that Dhaka’s request for Hasina’s extradition from India has no legal basis, claiming that the judicial process used to convict her was fundamentally compromised. “For an extradition to happen, the judicial process has to be followed. In Bangladesh, there is a government that’s unelected, unconstitutional and illegal,” he claims.

He also alleges that laws were amended specifically to fast-track Hasina’s trial. “They amended laws to convict my mother… these laws were amended illegally,” he claimed, adding that her defence lawyers were barred from court.

According to him, the judiciary was reshaped ahead of the verdict. “Seventeen judges were terminated before the trial. New judges were appointed, some with no experience and political connections. So, there was no due process whatsoever,” he said.

Wazed reiterated that without due process, Bangladesh’s extradition plea “cannot stand.”

Hasina, 78, fled to India after her government collapsed in August 2024 during the “July Uprising,” when security forces carried out a sweeping crackdown on nationwide protests. A UN rights report estimates up to 1,400 deaths between July 15 and August 15. She has since called interim leader Yunus a “usurper.”

The tribunal that convicted her, originally established by her own government to prosecute 1971 war-crimes suspects, was overhauled by the interim regime to include contemporary political violence.