Bangladesh's longest-serving prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed began her political career as a pro-democracy icon, but fled mass protests against her rule in August 2024 after 15 years in power.
Since then, Hasina has been in self-imposed exile in India, where she flew after being deposed by the student-led uprising which spiraled into nationwide unrest.
On November 17, a special tribunal in Dhaka sentenced her to death after convicting her of crimes against humanity. It was found Hasina had ordered a deadly crackdown on protesters between July 15 and August 5, 2024. She denied all charges against her.
Up to 1,400 people were killed during the weeks of protests leading up to her ousting, most by gunfire from security forces, according to UN human rights investigators. Their report found that she and her government had tried to cling to power using systematic, deadly violence against protesters.
It was the worst bloodshed the country had seen since independence in 1971.
The protests brought an unexpected end to the reign of Hasina, who had ruled Bangladesh for more than 20 years.
She and her Awami League party were credited with overseeing the South Asian country's economic progress. But in recent years, she was accused of turning autocratic and clamping down on any opposition.
Politically motivated arrests, disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and other abuses all rose under her rule.
An order to 'use lethal weapons'
In January 2024, Hasina won an unprecedented fourth term as prime minister in an election widely decried by critics as a sham and boycotted by the main opposition.
Protests began later that year with a demand to abolish quotas in civil service jobs. By summer they had morphed into a wider anti-government movement as she used the police to violently crack down on protesters.
Amid increasing calls for her to resign, Hasina remained defiant and condemned the agitators as “terrorists.” She also threw hundreds of people into jail and brought criminal charges against hundreds more.
A leaked audio clip suggested she had ordered security forces to use lethal weapons against protesters. She denies ever issuing an order to fire on unarmed civilians.
Some of the bloodiest scenes occurred on August 5, the day Hasina fled by helicopter before crowds stormed her residence in Dhaka. Police killed at least 52 people that day in a busy neighborhood, making it one of the worst cases of police violence in the country's history.
Hasina, who has been tried in absentia, called the tribunal a farce.
It is a kangaroo court controlled by my political opponents to deliver a pre-ordained guilty verdict... and to distract the world's attention from the chaos, violence, and misrule of [the new] government, she told the BBC in the week before her verdict.
She called for the ban on her party to be lifted before elections due in February.
Hasina is also charged with crimes against humanity relating to forced disappearances during the Awami League's rule in another case at the same tribunal in Bangladesh. Hasina and the Awami League deny all the charges.
Hasina and other senior members of her former government are also facing trial for corruption in a separate court - charges they deny.
