Former prime minister of Bangladesh, 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, resigned from office and fled to India on August 5 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 country’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.
“My instructions have already been given. I’ve issued an open order completely. Now they will use lethal weapons, shoot wherever they find them,” she said.. “That has been instructed. I have stopped them so far … I was thinking about the students’ safety.”
Later in the call with Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh, the mayor of Dhaka South and a relative of Hasina, the former PM talks about using helicopters to control demonstrations.
“Wherever they notice any gathering, it’s from above – now it’s being done from above – it has already started in several places. It has begun. Some [protesters] have moved.”
At the time, Bangladeshi security forces had denied firing on protesters from the air, but Shabir Sharif, an accident and emergency doctor at the Popular Medical College Hospital in Dhaka, told the I-Unit that shots were fired from a helicopter “targeting our hospital entrance”.
He added that doctors attended to student protesters with unusual bullet wounds.
“The bullets entered either the shoulder or the chest, and they all remained inside the body. We were receiving more of these types of patients at that time,” he said. “When we looked at the X-rays, we were surprised because there were huge bullets.” Al Jazeera has not been able to verify what type of bullets were used.
The calls may be presented by prosecutors as evidence before the ICT, which has charged Hasina, her ministers and security officials with crimes against humanity. Hasina and two other officials were indicted on July 10, and the trial is scheduled to begin in August.
Hasina’s surveillance net