A New Kind of Defendant: Bangladesh's Tribunal Law Now Reaches Political Parties

Strategic Brief  ·  Futura Genesis Center  ·  July 2026

What Changed

On February 10, 2025, Bangladesh's interim government amended the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act, 1973 — the law that created the tribunal originally built to prosecute individuals for crimes committed during the 1971 Liberation War — by issuing the International Crimes (Tribunals) (Amendment) Ordinance, 2025. According to reporting from the state-run news agency BSS, the amendment adds a clause and section giving the tribunal the power to try and punish political parties, not only individuals, as defendants.

The government described the change as making the Act "time-befitting" and framed it as an initiative to strengthen the tribunal. The ICT's own prosecution team reportedly welcomed the amendment, calling it "an appropriate initiative."

That is the extent of what is confirmed in the available reporting. This is a single-source finding at the time of writing, and the piece below is scoped accordingly.

Why This Is a Structural Escalation

For more than five decades, the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act existed to prosecute individuals — military officers, collaborators, members of paramilitary auxiliary forces — for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed in 1971. Individual criminal responsibility was the tribunal's entire theory of liability.

A provision enabling the tribunal to try and punish a political party as such is a different kind of instrument. It shifts the unit of legal responsibility from a person to an organization. Whatever the drafters' stated intent, this is a structural change to what the tribunal can do, independent of how or whether it is ever used. A law that can punish a party, rather than only the individuals who acted within it, is categorically more powerful — and more consequential for a country's competitive party system — than one confined to individual prosecution.

It matters, too, that this amendment arrives by ordinance, under Bangladesh's post-August-2024 interim political configuration, rather than through ordinary legislative deliberation. The available source material does not elaborate on the process by which the ordinance was adopted beyond noting the February 10 date; we flag the ordinance route as notable without asserting anything further about it, since the reporting in hand does not go further.

Has It Been Used Against a Party? The Reporting Does Not Say

The single source located in this research pass reports the creation of the party-liability clause. It does not report any tribunal action taken under it — no party has been named, charged, or tried under this provision according to the material available here. Readers should not infer that this power has already been deployed against any specific party (including, but not limited to, any party that might be an obvious candidate given Bangladesh's current political alignments). That is a distinct, and as-yet unconfirmed, question from whether the power now exists.

This distinction is the central point of this brief: Bangladesh's war-crimes tribunal now has a substantially expanded legal tool available to it. Whether, when, and against whom it is used is a separate matter that current reporting does not address.

Sourcing Note

This finding rests on a single located source: BSS (Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, the state news agency), reporting on the February 10, 2025 ordinance under the headline "ICT ordinance gets clause, section to try, punish political parties." No independent, non-state, or international outlet corroborating this specific development was found in this research pass. Given that the only source identified is state-affiliated, and that state media reporting favorably on the government's own legal amendment carries an obvious framing interest, readers should treat the characterization of the amendment as "strengthening" the tribunal as the government's own framing, not a neutral assessment. Corroborating and follow-up reporting — including any subsequent application of the party-liability provision — should be sought before drawing further conclusions.

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