The mask has finally slipped. On 8 October 2025, the so-called International Crimes Tribunal—resurrected and repurposed as the most potent political weapon of Dr. Muhammad Yunus’s illegitimate interim government—issued arrest warrants against 30 individuals, including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and 24 military officers, 14 of whom are still in active service. The order, signed by Justice Md. Golam Mortuza Majumder of Tribunal-1, instructs authorities to present all accused before the court by 22 October.
Never before in Bangladesh’s history has a civilian court sought to arrest such a large number of serving military officers. The resulting tension within the armed forces is both palpable and unprecedented. What we are witnessing is not a pursuit of justice, but a calculated assault on the very institution that once ensured the state’s stability.
From the day Dr. Yunus and his unelected cohort seized power, they have sought to use the judiciary—and this tribunal in particular—as a blunt instrument to destroy the Awami League and erase Sheikh Hasina’s legacy. In pursuit of that vendetta, the tribunal was re-engineered, its laws amended unconstitutionally by executive fiat, and its leadership handed to none other than Barrister Tazul Islam, the former defence lawyer of convicted war criminals.
The latest “amendment,” rammed through on 6 October, demonstrates the tribunal’s grotesque political motive. It decrees that anyone merely accused under the tribunal’s law must be suspended from any constitutional or public position and barred from contesting elections. In other words, accusation itself equals conviction—a perversion of justice so blatant that it mocks every principle of due process and human rights. In this Orwellian system, lawlessness has become law, and vengeance masquerades as justice.
The Army in the Crosshairs
The warrants against serving and retired officers are no coincidence. The accused include former heads of DGFI and RAB intelligence—essentially targeting the very organs that guard the state’s security architecture. The tribunal did not consult the armed forces, nor did it allow them to provide institutional input. By treating departmental allegations as grounds for immediate “expulsion,” the regime has deliberately crippled the military’s autonomy and challenged its professional integrity. The message from the Yunus regime is brutally simple: either serve as our pawns, or face prosecution.
By turning legal machinery against its own protectors, the regime has opened a Pandora’s box—one that could see a steady stream of politicized cases designed to break the army’s morale, reduce it to submission, and neutralize it as an independent force.
The Irony of Betrayal
This betrayal carries a bitter irony. The Yunus administration rose to power on the shoulders of the military, which deployed nationwide under the pretext of “restoring order.” Yet after fourteen months of collaboration—willing or otherwise—the army finds itself the latest casualty of the very machine it enabled.
Why this sudden hostility? Because the regime’s architects no longer need the army’s protection. Having already dismantled constitutional institutions—from the Election Commission to the Supreme Court—they now move to domesticate the military. The army’s cooperation lent legitimacy to a government that has suppressed civil rights, enabled mob violence, and empowered radical elements. The public’s trust in the forces has eroded. Now, with their image tarnished, Dr. Yunus and his deep-state backers are tightening the leash.
The army can either remain a tool in their hands—or be dragged through the courts as scapegoats.
The General Who Lost His Army
Here lies the heart of the tragedy. On 5 August 2024, General Waker-Uz-Zaman stood before the nation and claimed that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had resigned. We now know he lied. He promised to “protect the people’s safety.” Fourteen months later, Bangladesh has descended into mob rule, chaos, and fear—under his watch, and sometimes under his command.
He vowed to uphold the spirit of the Liberation War; yet freedom monuments have been vandalized, Mujib’s legacy desecrated, and freedom fighters humiliated, all as he remained silent.
He declared there would be “no bloody corridor.” Yet the corridor now turns to be the reality, paved with the footprints of foreign troops under the guise of “joint exercises.”
He pledged elections within 18 months—another lie. He swore the military would not be used politically—yet his soldiers have been seen acting as the street muscle of a party that doesn’t even exist on paper, firing upon unarmed citizens in Gopalganj.
But one promise he has kept: the one he made, perhaps unwittingly, to the enemies of 1971. With quiet devotion, he has overseen the rehabilitation of Jamaat-e-Islami, whose leaders he once called “Amir-e-Jamaat” with reverence. Under his watch, the ideological poison of Pakistani revivalism has seeped back into Bangladesh. Militant preachers like Jashimuddin Rahmani have re-emerged, emboldened, sometimes even speaking from army vehicles.
For fourteen months, the armed forces have oscillated between complicity and paralysis—sometimes silent, sometimes servile—while the Yunus regime dismantled the republic brick by brick. Perhaps they believed they could share power and protect themselves. But as the old saying goes, when the city burns, temples too are not spared.
Frankenstein Turns on Its Creator
Today, the creature they nurtured has turned on them. This is Bangladesh’s Frankenstein moment. By undermining the military’s morale, humiliating its officers, and dragging them into politically engineered trials, Dr. Yunus seeks to complete the conquest of the state—not through tanks, but through terror masked as law.
Even more telling is the image of the Army Chief himself reportedly pleading with the Chief Justice to protect his officers—only to be refused. That spectacle alone reveals how far the mighty have fallen.
A soldier is trained to die for his commander’s word. He believes his superiors will, in turn, defend him. What happens when that faith collapses? When soldiers see their commander powerless—reduced to a pawn in a regime’s cynical game—the institution itself begins to die from within.
And that, perhaps, is exactly what Dr. Yunus intends. The arrest warrants are not the end—they are merely the first shots in a war to break the army’s soul.
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History will not forgive the generals who stood by as the republic they once vowed to protect was handed over to its sworn enemies. Nor will it forgive the regime that mistook vengeance for justice and submission for peace.
When the army falls silent, tyranny speaks the loudest. And Bangladesh, once again, stands at the crossroads of its destiny.
