A special tribunal in Bangladesh on Thursday issued an arrest warrant against Sajib Wajed Joy, the exiled son of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The warrant has been issued a month after his mother was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity.
“The tribunal has issued an arrest warrant in the case registered against him (Joy) for crimes against humanity during the July insurgency,” a prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Bangladesh (ICT-BD) told reporters. He said that a similar warrant was issued against Junaid Ahmed Palak, the then junior minister for ICT affairs. Palak is already in jail.
The ICT-BD sentenced former Prime Minister and his then Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal to death for their efforts to suppress violent student-led protests. This decision has been pronounced in his absence.
Joy (54) is an information communication expert, who has served as an advisor on ICT matters to the former Prime Minister, currently living in the US.
Due to the violent student-led movement, former Prime Minister Hasina’s Awami League government fell on August 5, 2025, and she had to flee the country. This demonstration is known as the July Uprising. At the same time, in January, the interim government led by Professor Mohammed published a list of 834 deaths of ‘July warriors’.
The ICT-BD on Thursday accepted formal charges against former law minister Anees-ul-Haq and former prime minister’s investment adviser Salman F Rehman in a separate case filed over the ‘mass murder’ that took place following the imposition of curfew during the protests.
Both are already in jail, while the tribunal ordered them to appear in person on December 10, along with Palak, the then junior ICT minister.
