• Verdict to be pronounced three months ahead of elections.
• Hasina Wajid has defied court orders to return from India.
• 1,400 people killed during anti-government protests in 2024.
  

The verdict in the crimes against humanity case against ousted Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina will be delivered on November 13, the attorney general said, as the trial ended on Thursday.

Hasina, 78, has defied court orders to return from India to face charges of ordering a deadly crackdown in a failed attempt to crush a student-led uprising.

“If she believed in the justice system, she should have returned,” Attorney General Md Asaduzzaman said in his closing speech of the nearly five-month-long trial in Dhaka.

“She was the prime minister but fled, leaving behind the entire nation— her fleeing corroborates the allegations.”

Her trial in absentia, which opened on June 1, heard months of testimony alleging Hasina ordered mass killings.

Up to 1,400 people were killed between July and August 2024, according to the United Nations.

Prosecutors have filed five charges, including failure to prevent murder, amounting to crimes against humanity under Bangladeshi law.

They have demanded the death penalty if she is found guilty.

Chief prosecutor Tajul Islam has accused Hasina of being “the nucleus around whom all the crimes were committed” during the uprising.

Her co-accused are former interior minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, also a fugitive, and ex-police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, who is in custody and has pleaded guilty.

‘We want justice’

Witnesses included a man whose face was ripped apart by gunfire.

The prosecution also played audio tapes — verified by police — that suggested Hasina directly ordered security forces to “use lethal weapons” against protesters.

Hasina, assigned a state-appointed lawyer, has refused to recognise the court’s authority.

Defence lawyer Md Amir Hossain said she was “forced to flee” Bangladesh, claiming that she “preferred death and a burial within her residence compound”.

Her now-banned Awami League says she “categorically denies” all charges and has denounced the proceedings as “little more than a show trial”.

Asaduzzaman, the attorney general, said it had been a fair trial that sought justice for all victims.

“We want justice for both sides of the crimes against humanity case, that claimed 1,400 lives,” he said, listing several of those killed, including children.

The verdict will come three months ahead of elections expected in early February 2026, the first since Hasina’s overthrow.

LONDON: Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged an additional £10 million in security funding to protect Muslim communities from hate crimes and attacks after increase in attacks on Muslims and mosques across the UK.

The UK PM announced the funding boost following a visit to the Peacehaven Mosque in East Sussex which was targeted in a suspected arson attack earlier this month. 

No one was injured in the fire which damaged the front entrance of the mosque and a car, while the police said they are treating the incident as a hate crime. Two people have been arrested but not charged.

The new investment for mosques and Muslim faith centres will provide security measures including CCTV, alarm systems, secure fencing and security staff, the Government said.

Keir said: “Britain is a proud and tolerant country. Attacks on any community are attacks on our entire nation and our values. This funding will provide Muslim communities with the protection they need and deserve, allowing them to live in peace and safety. I want a Britain built for all and my government is committed to delivering safer streets for everyone – and that means protecting places of worship from those who seek to divide us through hate and violence.”

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “The attack on the Peacehaven Mosque was an appalling crime, that could easily have led to an even more devastating outcome.

“I am proud of this country because of the rights we all have to follow the faith of our choosing, and to live free from hatred and fear. That right must be defended. Violence and intimidation directed at any community or faith are attacks on us all. We must stand together against those who seek to divide us.”

During the visit, relatives of a member of the mosque who fled from inside when the door was torched told the Prime Minister he has become withdrawn after the incident.

“He’s very traumatised,” one family member told Sir Keir.

“This (mosque) was his life.”

“We shouldn’t need to have security in places of worship, and it’s sad that we do,” the Prime Minister told members of the community. “That (funding) just reflects the responsibility on me, or my Home Secretary and your MP, to do everything we can tackle hate crime, but also to express our support and solidarity.”

The additional £10 million will boost the Protective Security for Mosques Scheme which protects Muslim community centres and faith schools that have either experienced or are vulnerable to hate crime and builds on the £29.4 million already available this year, the Government said.

According to the government, the most recent hate crime statistics show that anti-Muslim hate crimes rose by 19% in the year ending March 2025, while 44% of all religious hate crimes targeted Muslims.

The chief executive of the British Muslim Trust, Akeela Ahmed welcomed the announcement, saying that everyone “deserves to live their life peacefully” and “without the threat of fear”.

She added: “Sadly, this is not the case for too many members of our Muslim communities. They have become fearful and apprehensive as their Mosques, places dedicated to faith, love and peace, have been vandalised, set on fire and worshippers abused and assaulted. We welcome the announcement of this funding which will play a key role in helping members of Britain’s Muslim communities feel the safety and reassurance they need and deserve.”

NAGPUR: Brandishing bamboo sticks and chanting patriotic hymns, thousands of uniformed men parade in central India, a striking show of strength by the country’s millions-strong Hindu ultranationalist group.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — the National Volunteer Organisation, or RSS — marked its 100th anniversary this month with a grand ceremony at its headquarters in Nagpur.

AFP was one of a handful of foreign media outlets granted rare access to the group, which forms the ideological and organisational backbone of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in power since 2014.

Like the 75-year-old prime minister, critics accuse it of eroding the rights of India’s Muslim minority and undermining the secular constitution.

At the parade, RSS volunteers in white shirts, brown trousers and black hats marched, boxed and stretched in time to shrill whistles and barked orders.

“Forever I bow to thee, loving Motherland! Motherland of us Hindus!” they sang, in a scene that evoked paramilitary drills of the past.

“May my life […] be laid down in thy cause!”

‘Proud’

Hindus make up around 80% of India’s 1.4 billion people.

Founded in 1925, the RSS calls itself “the world’s largest organisation”, though it does not give membership figures.

At the heart of its vision is “Hindutva” — the belief that Hindus represent not only a religious group but are India’s true national identity.

“They are willing to fight against those who will come in their way […] that means minorities, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and other Hindus who do not subscribe to the idea,” historian Mridula Mukherjee said.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat uses softer language, saying that minorities were accepted but that they “should not cause division”.

Anant Pophali, 53, said three generations of his family had been involved with the group. “The RSS made me proud to be an Indian,” the insurance company worker said.

Bloody origins

The RSS was formed during the imperial rule of the British. But it diverged sharply from that of independence efforts by Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party, whose leader Jawaharlal Nehru considered them “fascist by nature”.

Mukherjee said archives showed “a link between the RSS and fascist movements in Europe”.

“They have said, very clearly, that the way the Nazis were treating the Jews should be the way our own minorities should be treated,” she told AFP.

The RSS does not comment directly on such parallels, but Bhagwat insisted that “today we are more acceptable”.

The RSS was an armed Hindu militia during the bloody 1947 partition of India and the creation of Muslim-majority Pakistan.

Hindu extremists blamed Gandhi for breaking India apart. A former RSS member assassinated him in 1948, and the group was banned for nearly two years.

But the RSS rebuilt quietly, focusing on local units known as “shakhas” to recruit. Today, it claims 83,000 of them nationwide, as well as over 50,000 schools and 120,000 social welfare projects.

At a shakha in Nagpur, Alhad Sadachar, 49, said the unit was “meant to develop togetherness”.

“You can get a lot of good energy, a lot of good values, like helping those in need”, he said.

At a shaka that AFP was allowed to attend, dozens of members — many middle-aged or elderly, and not in uniform — gathered for an hour of calisthenics and song.

But in a show of symbolism, they congregated beneath a saffron flag — the colour of Hinduism — rather than India’s tricolour.

‘A country that is one’

The RSS remains deeply political. The group re-emerged in the late 1980s, spearheading a movement that ended with a violent mob demolishing a centuries-old mosque in Ayodhya — now replaced by a gleaming temple to the Hindu god Rama.

“That was the turning point,” said Mukherjee, the historian, adding that the RSS was “able to create a mass mobilisation on religious issues, that became at its heart clearly anti-Muslim”.

The group helped deliver Modi’s BJP party an electoral landslide in 2014.

Since then, Modi — a former RSS “pracharak”, or organiser — has pursued policies that critics say marginalise India’s estimated 220 million Muslims, 15% of the population.

“There has been a clear increase in terms of violence, lynching and hate speech since Modi has taken over,” said Raqib Hameed Naik, director of the US-based Centre for the Study of Organised Hate.

RSS leaders deny it has participated in atrocities. “Those allegations are baseless,” Bhagwat said.

“Atrocities were never done by the RSS. And if it happens anyway, I condemn that.”

Under Modi, it has expanded its reach.”The RSS has been able to stir Indian society in a direction that is more nationalistic, less liberal in a Western sense,” said Swapan Dasgupta, a former nationalist parliamentarian.

But volunteer Vyankatesh Somalwar, 44, said the group only pushed “good values”.

“The most important thing is to contribute to your country,” he said. “A country that is one, above all.”