Bangladesh Hands Ex-Leader 21 Years in Jail After Death Penalty

Sheikh Hasina remains in exile in New Delhi.

Photographer: Christopher Pike/Bloomberg

A Bangladeshi court has sentenced former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, already facing the death penalty for last year’s violent crackdown, to 21 years in prison in multiple corruption cases, a lawyer for the nation’s anti-graft agency said Thursday.

Hasina, who fled to India last year and was tried in absentia, was found guilty of corruption, and the court handed her a seven-year sentence for each of the three cases against her, said Khan Mohammad Moinul Hasan, chief coordinator for the Anti-Corruption Commission in an interview to Bloomberg News. The sentence “will run one after the other rather than concurrently,” he added.