New Delhi, Aug. 11 -- NEW DELHI - Two years to the day after she boarded a military helicopter and fled Bangladesh as student protesters stormed her residence, Sheikh Hasina sat in her New Delhi home on Wednesday and announced she was coming back.

"I may be detained, I may be sent to prison," the 78-year-old former prime minister said in an audio address to international correspondents at an event organized by the Foreign Correspondents' Club of South Asia. "But fear cannot decide my duty to the people."

What she did not say was how she planned to board a plane to a country where a court has sentenced her to death.

The announcement, made alongside her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy and senior Awami League members, was Hasina's most explicit comm...