Several senior officials gave crucial information to the UN Fact Finding Mission about Sheikh Hasina's actions during the July uprising.

They told the mission that Hasina on the night of July 10 authorised the director general of the DGFI to carry out secret negotiations with the student leaders. 

After July 16, she designated civilian senior officials to negotiate with the students, namely her law minister, education minister, and state minister for information, in addition to the efforts of the DGFI, the officials told the mission.

The mission's report quoted a senior official as saying that the then prime minister felt that if they deployed their "heavy units then only the Jihadists will remain on the streets and other protesters would go home".

It learnt from officials that Hasina and several senior officials from the Prime Minister's Office regularly conferred in person and over the phone with senior security officials to directly supervise and direct their operations.

The UN team inspected call logs of the officials to confirm this.

The officials said Hasina received daily reports on protests from security officials and the three intelligence services -- DGFI, NSI, and SB of Police -- directly reported to her.

"On August 4, the then prime minister chaired a meeting of the National Security Council in which the chiefs of the army, Border Guard Bangladesh [BGB], police, intelligence agencies, and the Ministers of Home Affairs, Education and Foreign Affairs, among others, participated. They discussed reimposing a curfew and enforcing it to prevent the March on Dhaka," said the report quoting officials.

"A second meeting was held in the late evening of August 4 at the prime minister's residence… A plan was agreed on, and according to it, the army and BGB would deploy alongside police to block protesters from accessing central Dhaka, if necessary, by force," it added.

The plan was that the army and BGB were to block access routes into central Dhaka by deploying armoured vehicles and troops, while the police was to "control mobs," senior officials who were at the meetings told the mission.

The mission obtained copies of two WhatsApp messages the former director general of the Special Security Forces sent to the director general of the BGB at 00:55am on August 5, 2024.

The first message appeared to be from the protest leaders informing marchers about which routes to take to central Dhaka. The second message contained a video advising marchers how to circumvent the defence lines of the security forces.

The team spoke to an official who had personally called Hasina on August 5 to inform her that things were not going as planned.