A Bangladeshi court on Monday handed former prime minister Sheikh Hasina a death sentence after finding her guilty of crimes against humanity, a verdict that drew cheers from those packed inside the courtroom.

Judge Golam Mortuza Mozumder announced that Hasina, 78, was convicted on three charges, including incitement, issuing orders to kill, and failing to prevent deadly abuses during the violent crackdown triggered by the student-led movement that toppled her government in August 2024.

She had refused to return from India to attend her trial, defying court orders.

The ruling, aired live on national television, comes just months before the country heads to the first elections since her ouster, slated for February 2026.

“All elements constituting crimes against humanity have been proven,” the judge said as he delivered the decision. “We impose a single punishment, the death penalty.”

Former interior minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, who is also on the run, received the same sentence after being convicted on four counts.

Former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, who appeared in court and confessed, was given a five-year prison term.

Bangladesh has been gripped by political instability since the end of Hasina’s rule, with rising violence casting a shadow over the upcoming polls.

According to the United Nations, as many as 1,400 people were killed in security crackdowns as Hasina clung to power, deaths that formed a core part of the prosecution’s case.

Prosecutors had lodged five charges against her, including failing to prevent murder, all of which fall under Bangladesh’s definition of crimes against humanity.

The months-long trial relied heavily on testimony in her absence, with witnesses describing wide-scale killings allegedly ordered by Hasina.

She has repeatedly dismissed the proceedings as a “jurisprudential joke.”

Although the court appointed a state lawyer to represent her, Hasina rejected the court’s legitimacy and denied all allegations.

In an October interview with AFP, she claimed the outcome was predetermined and that a guilty verdict would “come as no surprise.”

Security was tightened across Dhaka ahead of the verdict.

Armoured vehicles and checkpoints were stationed around the courthouse, and nearly half of the city’s 34,000 police officers were deployed.

Authorities had already been grappling with a spate of crude bomb attacks this month, targeting sites linked to the interim administration under Muhammad Yunus, as well as buses and Christian institutions.

Hostility between Dhaka and New Delhi has also risen.

Bangladesh summoned India’s envoy, accusing the country of giving Hasina, whom they call a “notorious fugitive”, a platform to direct hostile rhetoric at the interim government.

Despite her isolation, Hasina has remained outspoken.

She has said she “mourned all lives lost” during the deadly clashes with student protesters, a remark that angered many who say she pursued power at any cost.

She has also warned that the interim government’s ban on her Awami League party is worsening the country’s political crisis ahead of the elections.

A woman who was known as the UK’s oldest witch has died at home at the age of 97.

Patricia Crowther was a follower and “high priestess” of the Wicca pagan religion and co-created the show “A Spell of Witchcraft” on BBC Radio Sheffield in the 1970s.

Introducing the first of the six episodes, she said: ” ‘Witchcraft’ simply means the craft of the wise people – nothing sensational or horrific in that.”

The show hoped to “redress some of the balance” in attitudes towards witchcraft by delving into the history and rituals of the then-obscure religion, and is credited with bringing it to a wider audience.

Mrs Crowther, who lived in Sheffield all her life, created the show alongside her husband, Arnold Crowther, with whom she established Sheffield Coven.

She was initiated into Wicca in 1960 by Gerald Gardner, who is credited with developing the religion, according to pagan publication Wild Hunt.

Her husband, who had been initiated a short time after her, died in 1974.

Before joining the occult, she had spent summers as a performer on piers and theatres, and did pantomimes in winter, said Ian Lilleyman, her partner of more than 40 years.

“She loved the theatre. That was the best part of her life, she just loved it,” the 75-year-old said.

The pair met at a vegetarian society meeting, where she had been a speaker, and Mr Lilleyman a member of the audience.

Mrs Crowther had been a professional dancer for years and spent time as a children’s entertainer but, as she told The Guardian in the nineties, witches do not work for money.

But she kept dancing as part of witchcraft practices, Mr Lilleyman said.

From aged four, when she took lessons at the Constance Grant Dance Centre in Sheffield, she never stopped until she lost her mobility later in life, he said.

And, during wartime, she had sung and played the accordion as part of a group which entertained the troops.

“If I remember rightly, they weren’t allowed to know where they were going and the windows were blacked out,” he added.

She maintained her interest and belief in witchcraft for her whole life and wrote multiple books, including Witchcraft in Yorkshire and From Stagecraft to Witchcraft.

Mr Lilleyman said there was “never a time she would just sit down and do nothing”.

“At night, I would go off to bed and she would be sat reading a book. She never stopped learning, even as she got older,” he said.

“She said, ‘you’ve got to read to learn, you don’t know everything, you might think you do but you don’t’.”

The couple also enjoyed visiting their cottage in Whitby.

After about five years of struggling with dementia, she passed away on Wednesday morning with her partner at her side.

Reporting her passing, pagan news site Wild Hunt described her memory as a “blessing” to those who have been touched by her work.

“Her spirit continues to live on in the covens and communities she inspired,” it added. (BBC)

UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government over its immigration policy, declaring that Britain is “a home, not a hotel.”

Badenoch accused Labour of weakening the country’s borders and enabling mass automatic citizenship.

In a 1:11-minute video posted on her official X account on Friday, Badenoch claimed Labour’s proposed reforms could allow up to two million immigrants to automatically qualify for British citizenship starting next year.

“From next year, two million immigrants can automatically claim British citizenship. Two million people! That’s nearly twice the population of Birmingham. That’s massive,” Badenoch said in the video.

Badenoch noted that the Conservative Party has introduced a deportation bill to bring immigration down.

Among the measures she endorsed in the video were deporting all foreign criminals, mandatory age checks, no more pretending to be kids, tougher visa rules and salary thresholds, disapplying the Human Rights Act to immigration cases, and no more abusing human rights laws to judge deportations.

Make asylum support repayable, and no permanent right to stay in the UK if you’ve relied on benefits.

“Until that’s law, we won’t fix this. Labour should adopt it now. It’s time to get tough. That’s what the Conservatives’ Deportation Bill delivers, and we’re going to go further. Our country is a home, not a hotel. And if we don’t defend it, no one else will.”

In the caption that came with the video, she tweeted, “Labour has blocked every single measure we’ve put forward to cut immigration and stop abuse of the system.

“Now they’re pushing one half-arsed proposal — it’s weak; it won’t work. It’s time they stopped playing games and backed our Deportation Bill.”