An estimated 1,400 people died in the July uprising of 2024, which led to Sheikh Hasina’s ouster on August 5, 2024. To contribute to accountability, reconciliation, and a sense of justice for the Bangladeshi people, the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) was revived.

Created in 2010 based on the 1973 ICT act, the tribunal was designed to prosecute atrocities committed during the 1971 Liberation War. It was heavily criticized – especially in 2011-2012 but throughout her tenure – for being used by Hasina to put opposition figures on trial for 1971-era crimes. The ICT was seen as politically instrumentalized and lacking due process. 

This year, three journalists and a secular writer were arrested and accused before the ICT of crimes against humanity through incitement in connection with their reporting. They have been imprisoned for almost two years now on a wave of murder charges in the regular courts. Human rights organizations have condemned the murder charges and have raised concerns that the tribunal may now be used against figures associated with the former governing order, including journalists. 

“The crimes committed against the student-led movement in July and August 2024, in which hundreds were killed, demand a proper accounting, and those responsible should face justice,” said Toby Cadman, a human rights lawyer and former advisor to the ICT’s Chief Prosecutor. “The victims and the country are entitled to a process directed at truth, justice and reconciliation rather than retribution, and that makes it all the more important that these trials meet the highest standards of due process – properly particularized charges, timely disclosure, effective access to counsel, and meaningful judicial review of detention.” 

Journalists Entangled in Legal Cases 

Four Bangladeshi journalists – Farzana Rupa, her husband Shakil Ahmed, Mozammel Babu, and Shyamal Dutta – and writer Shahriar Kabir have faced criminal proceedings connected to the uprising. All have been imprisoned since 2024. 

Rupa and Shakil were initially arrested at Dhaka airport on August 21, 2024, in connection with a murder case concerning the death of a garment worker named Fazlul. In the following months, they were produced before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court several times in connection with new cases. Rupa reportedly faces nine murder cases, while Shakil faces six. 

Mozammel Babu, Shyamal Dutta, and Shahriar Kabir were arrested in September 2024 under similar uprising-related murder charges. 

In a Daily Star interview published on November 21, 2024, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, then head of the interim government, acknowledged that the murder cases filed against journalists had been “done hastily” and distanced the government from the charges. 

His then law adviser, Asif Nazrul, went further at a press-freedom roundtable on June 26, 2025, disclosing that 266 journalists had been sued. He stressed that the cases “were not initiated by the government – they were filed by ordinary citizens,” adding, “[W]e have made it clear that no arrests should be made unless there is substantial evidence.”

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which came to power in February 2026, made its own explicit pledge in its election manifesto to ensure press freedom by reviewing the Digital Security Act, preventing attacks on media outlets, withdrawing politically motivated cases, and ensuring justice for tortured and murdered journalists. Yet neither commitment has translated into relief for the four journalists and one writer. 

Since their arrest in 2024, family members of those accused have filed numerous bail applications, citing lack of evidence, an absence of a prima facie case, and the advanced age or poor health of several defendants – Shahriar Kabir, aged 75, and Babu, who is suffering from cancer. Bail applications for Kabir and Babu have been continuously rejected. On May 11, 2026, the Dhaka High Court granted interim bail to Rupa in six cases and to Shakil in five. The Appellate Division subsequently suspended the bail granted to Rupa and Shakil.

Earlier this year, in a significant escalation, Rupa, Babu, Dutta, and Kabir were all arrested in separate ICT cases. The first case concerns Ekattor TV’s coverage and a subsequent documentary on the 2013 Shapla Chattar crackdown, implicating Rupa, Babu, and Kabir. A second ICT proceeding, initiated in August 2026 concerning the July uprising of 2024, named Rupa, Babu, and Dutta. At the second case’s hearing on August 25, 2026, they were arrested in that case as well. 

The journalists now face proceedings on two tracks. Ordinary criminal charges run through regular courts, where bail can be granted. The ICT proceedings are separate, governed by a distinct legal framework, and involve allegations of crimes against humanity. 

The uncertainty has taken a toll on the families of those detained. Rupa and Shakil’s daughter, Monphool, was only 17 when both of her parents were arrested. She has spent the past two years working for their release, abandoning her own education to advocate for them. 

Monphool described falling asleep and waking up each day “asking the same question – whether today will be the day my mother or father comes home.” She lives in a state of “constant fear that cannot be put down. Ordinary conversations, home-cooked meals together, birthdays, things that most families often take for granted, have been lost.” 

“Waiting, every single day, has changed me,” Monphool said. “Cases like my parents’ have become a pattern in Bangladesh for far too long and many other families have already experienced what I am going through. I feel like I have lost my childhood to something that I have no control over, I only hope that it will come to an end.” 

The ICT as Political Instrument: A Recurring Political Pattern 

Moving from multiple murder cases to charges of crimes against humanity is a significant escalation. Under the 1973 Act, crimes against humanity require acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population. Portraying a protest as “provocative,” producing a television documentary, or asking a prime minister a pointed question at a press conference during the July uprising does not fall within this ambit.

Crucially, Bangladesh’s law historically lacked the mandatory requirement to prove that an alleged crime was part of such a “widespread or systematic attack,” as Article 7 of the Rome Statute demands. International legal scholars, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International flagged this gap during the 2010–2011 proceedings, but the Bangladesh Supreme Court’s 2013 judgment in Abdul Quader Molla v. Government of Bangladesh (arising from ICT-BD Case No. 02 of 2012) declined to incorporate the threshold. 

That leaves the tribunal free to try crimes against humanity by domestic standards incompatible with international law. While the interim government moved to amend the ICT Ordinance to align statutory definitions with the Rome Statute, how these legal standards are executed in practice remains contested. 

Procedural weaknesses compound the problem. Interlocutory orders on arrest, detention, or bail cannot be appealed; the Constitution suspends fundamental protections, including the right to a speedy, public trial, for anyone charged under the Act. Because the Act sets no distinct sentencing thresholds, a documentary producer and a perpetrator of mass atrocities face the same maximum penalty: death. 

Defense lawyers, meanwhile, report receiving nothing in writing corroborating the allegations even after their clients are shown arrested, with months passing before a charge sheet – and a real defense – becomes possible. 

Lessons From Rwanda 

As Cadman put it, true justice requires “prosecutorial discipline.” That means, he explained, “Charges should be brought only where there is a strong evidential basis for them. A case brought without that foundation does not simply fail; it weakens the cases that deserve to succeed, and it invites the very skepticism the Tribunal can least afford.” 

The 1973 Act was built to prosecute the Pakistan Army and its collaborators for 1971 wartime atrocities. Stretching that machinery to reach a decade-old broadcast or a reporter’s question transforms a transitional justice mechanism into a tool for ordinary political disputes. 

Importantly, international jurisprudence has already dealt with the question of journalists and crimes against humanity. 

“On journalists specifically, international law is settled and it is demanding,” said Cadman. “The Rwanda tribunal’s media jurisprudence establishes that liability does not attach to reporting, commentary or editorial line, however partisan. RTLM’s broadcasters were convicted because they broadcast the names, addresses and vehicle registrations of identified individuals so that they could be hunted down and killed, while the killing was underway – and even on those facts the Appeals Chamber in Nahimana reversed a substantial part of the trial judgment, holding that hate speech falling short of a direct call to commit the crime is not incitement, and that seniority at a broadcaster is no substitute for proof of the accused’s own contribution, intent and knowledge.” 

Cadman concluded: “…[F]or crimes against humanity the speech must additionally form part of the widespread or systematic attack charged. That is the threshold. It should be applied in Bangladesh as it would be anywhere else.”

Justice, Not Vendetta – Toward a Principled Standard 

Bangladesh’s political transition presents an opportunity to break the cycle in which each ruling coalition criminalizes its predecessors. A durable democratic transition requires stable institutions whose rules apply uniformly, narrow evidence-based prosecutions of grave violations, and a clear distinction between perpetrators, political associates, and journalists. 

Bangladesh must adopt a principled approach. Crimes-against-humanity charges against media actors should be pursued only where evidence establishes internationally recognized modes of responsibility. Where allegations concern routine journalistic conduct, courts should order release under standard bail provisions, avoid serial charge-filing, and permit international observers to monitor proceedings. 

The transitional justice project need not become an instrument of revenge. Bangladesh had a chance to fix this in 2012, and did not do so. As noted, reforms since have moved to align the ICT framework with international standards – but whether the tribunal enforces these thresholds in practice remains the real test. The tribunal’s logic will ultimately be judged by whether it declines to weigh a documentary or a press conference question on the same scale as mass atrocity.