The evidences obtained by Al Jazeera have revealed that ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina ordered police to use ‘lethal weapons’ against protesters during the July mass uprising last year.
Sheikh Hasina, “issued an open order” to “use lethal weapons” on students protesting against her government’s policies last year and shoot “wherever they find them”, her secret phone call recordings, accessed by Al Jazeera, have revealed.
Hasina, who ruled Bangladesh for 15 years, fled to India on August 5 in 2024 after weeks of bloody protests and brutal action by government forces killed nearly 1,400 people and wounded more than 20,000, according to the Bangladesh’s International Criminal Tribunal (ICT).
The Al Jazeera Investigative Unit (I-Unit) had the recordings analysed by audio forensic experts to check for AI manipulation, and the callers were identified by voice matching.
In one call, recorded on July 18 by the National Telecommunications Monitoring Centre (NTMC), Hasina told an ally that she had ordered her security forces to use lethal force, Qatar-based outlet Al Jazeera reports.বিস্তারিত