On October 28, Shafiqul Alam, the former press secretary of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, posted on Facebook that an AFP fact‑checker in Dhaka had brokered preliminary talks between Yunus and student leaders two days before Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country on August 5, 2024.
The student‑led protest movement that began in July 2024 over government job quotas escalated into nationwide unrest, prompting Hasina to leave Bangladesh on August 5. Two days later, on August 7, student leaders publicly urged Yunus to head an interim administration, a role he accepted on August 8 after returning from Paris.
Alam said Qadaruddin Shishir—then editor of AFP’s Dhaka fact‑check team—met with Yunus in secret to lay out a plan. He added that Shishir collected video footage of police crackdowns and that the discussions were kept hidden from the prime minister’s security apparatus to avoid arrest. “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,” Alam wrote.
Hasina has since accused the Yunus interim government of political persecution, while the interim administration governed until February 2026 before handing power to Tarique Rahman. Bangladesh’s authorities are now probing the alleged involvement of foreign media staff in the pre‑August 5 political maneuvering, with a formal investigation expected to begin in the coming weeks. Among the protesters, a 20‑year‑old student, Rafiq, lost his father during the crackdown, underscoring the stakes.