By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan said on Friday the death sentence handed down this week to Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s former prime minister, was strictly an internal affair of Dhaka and that its people were entirely capable of resolving their own political and legal matters through their constitutional processes.
The carefully neutral formulation, delivered by the Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi at his weekly news conference, shows Islamabad’s determination to avoid entanglement in Dhaka’s tumultuous post-Hasina transition while quietly welcoming a warming of ties with the new Bangladeshi authorities.
A special tribunal in Dhaka on Monday found Hasina, 77, guilty of crimes against humanity for ordering security forces to fire on protesters during last year’s student-led uprising that ultimately forced her from power. The court, the International Crimes Tribunal, ironically one that Hasina herself had established to prosecute atrocities from the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, sentenced her to death in absentia.
Hasina fled to India in August 2024 2024 and has since remained there under New Delhi’s protection. Dhaka has demanded her extradition, describing any refusal as “a highly unfriendly gesture and an affront to justice” and invoking the bilateral extradition treaty. Indian officials have so far rebuffed the requests, saying only that New Delhi remains committed to “the best interests of the people of Bangladesh, including in peace, democracy, inclusion and stability.”
Andrabi, asked repeatedly about the verdict, stuck firmly to Pakistan’s line. “This is an internal matter of Bangladesh,” he said. “The people of Bangladesh are fully capable of addressing their issues in accordance with their own democratic and constitutional processes.” He offered no further comment on the substance of the trial or the sentence.
Relations between Islamabad and Dhaka, long strained during Hasina’s 15-year rule have improved markedly since her ouster, with trade and high-level visits resuming. Pakistani officials are plainly reluctant to be seen defending a leader whose family has historically blamed Pakistan for the 1975 assassination of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s founding leader.
In the same briefing, Andrabi issued a sharp condemnation of Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank and at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. He cited the killing of two Palestinian teenagers in a raid near Ramallah overnight and what he called “repeated storming” of the mosque compound by settlers and security forces. “We strongly condemn this continuing violation by the Israeli occupying forces and extremist settlers against the Palestinian people,” he said, urging the international community to “take urgent and effective measures” to protect holy sites and enforce relevant United Nations resolutions. He noted a 14 percent increase in settler incursions over the past year, with more than 58,000 recorded by the Palestinian Awqaf authority.
On Afghanistan, the spokesperson placed full responsibility for the continued closure of key border crossings on the Taliban authorities in Kabul, accusing them of providing sanctuary to militant groups that have carried out attacks inside Pakistan. “The onus of the delay in opening the border crossing rests with the Afghan Taliban,” Andrabi said. He linked the suspension of bilateral trade and stalled energy projects such as TAPI and CASA-1000 to Kabul’s alleged “support to Fitna al-Hindustan and Fitna al-Khawarij,” terms Pakistan uses for anti-state militant networks.
The main Torkham and Chaman crossings have remained shut since Oct. 12, when Taliban-affiliated fighters attacked Pakistani border posts. Andrabi said Pakistan had “segregated trade and security” in the past but that “there is a threshold of patience, and I think that threshold has been crossed.” He ruled out any resumption of trade that effectively served as “a licence for the killing of Pakistanis from Afghan soil.”
Andrabi also took aim at recent Indian statements, accusing New Delhi’s political and military leadership of “continued war-mongering.” He dismissed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reported assurance to President Donald Trump, relayed publicly by Trump this week, that India would not start a war with Pakistan. “That assurance we obviously take with a pinch of salt,” Andrabi said. “It is not backed up by any cooling down of statements emanating from India.”
He welcomed, however, a new report to the United States Congress by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission that concluded Pakistani forces, using Chinese-made equipment, had shot down several Indian fighter jets, including French-built Rafales, during a brief clash in May. Andrabi called the findings “quite a telling conclusion.”
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