Hasina-Kader-Hasan phone calls on arson submitted to Tribunal

Prosecutors at the International Crimes Tribunal-2 submitted audio recordings of phone conversations between former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and two senior former ministers on Monday, purportedly capturing instructions to torch the homes and businesses of anti-government protesters during last July's uprising.

Prosecutor Gazi MH Tamim presented the recordings before the three-member panel led by Justice Nazrul Islam Chowdhury, later distributing transcripts to reporters. According to the submitted material, the calls took place on 19 and 21 July 2024 with then-road transport minister Obaidul Quader and then-foreign minister Hasan Mahmud. In the 19 July call, timestamped 2:54 pm, Hasina is heard telling Mahmud that since demonstrators would burn property regardless, "the public" should retaliate by burning the homes and vehicles of the protesters, adding that there was no point pursuing any other course -- "you'll burn, we'll burn too." Mahmud is said to have endorsed the directive as "tit for tat," proposing that supporters disperse into neighbourhoods within ten minutes of holding funeral prayers in absentia, a suggestion Hasina reportedly amended to direct each MP toward their own constituency instead, instructing them to arrange "protection" locally.

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Quader is then said to have joined the call, with Hasina raising the burning of the Bridge Building and requesting that the Rapid Action Battalion be deployed there, while telling him that since their own properties were being torched, the public would set fire to the other side's homes in turn -- and instructing him to identify what businesses belonged to them.