B'desh regime change: Hasina's ouster planned days before Aug 5, Yusuf aide claims

After Hanisa's ouster, student protest leaders publicly proposed Yunus as the head of an interim govt. A journalist working for French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) acted as an intermediary between student leaders in Bangladesh and Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus before Sheikh Hasina was forced from power in August 2024, according to a claim by Yunus's former press secretary Shafiqul Alam.In a Facebook post on October 28, Alam alleged that Qadaruddin Shishir, who was then with AFP's fact-checking team in Dhaka, helped arrange initial discussions between Yunus and student leaders who wanted him to head an interim government after Hasina's departure.Alam's account suggests that discussions about who would lead Bangladesh after Hasina had begun before she fled the country on August 5, 2024.Describing how the contact was established, Alam wrote: "When student leaders wanted to reach out to Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and invite him to head the interim government in a post-Hasina scenario, they needed a trusted bridge-builder. Qadaruddin Shishir stepped up to fulfill that critical role."Alam said Shishir managed the discussions discreetly while working alongside him a...