Dhaka, Dec 17 (bdnews24.com) – Guantanamo prisoner Mubarak Hussain bin Abul Hashem flew back home to Bangladesh Sunday.
Mubarak was interrogated at Zia International Airport before he was taken to the airport police station, bdnews24.com senior correspondent Abu Sufian reports from the scene.
The US Air Force took Mubarak to Dhaka on a special flight at 11:30am.
According to the Pentagon list, Mubarak, born on January 1, 1978, is from 'Baria' Bangladesh, which means Brahmanbaria.
Abul Hashem, father of Mubarak, told reporters that he sent his son to study at Anawarul Ulum Madrasa in Karachi in 1998.
Hashem went to the airport police station to see Mubarak after he got to know his son's homecoming from TV.
After two years of study, Mubarak taught another year at the same religious school before he went out of touch with his family, said Hashem, imam of the Graphics Art College mosque in Mohammadpur in Dhaka.
"We lost touch with Mubarak," he said. Hashem is a father of six sons and two daughters—all schooled in madrasas.
In 2004, Bangladesh Red Crescent Society first informed him about his son's capture in the Guantanamo Bay Military Prison, he said.
Hashem formally applied to Bangladesh Red Crescent Society on June 15, 2006 to bring his son back home. The bdnews24.com correspondent saw a copy of the application.
A police officer, who did not want to be named, said Pakistan intelligence officers captured him when he was trying to enter Pakistan from the Afghan city of Jalalabad.
Towards the end of 2001, the Pakistani officers handed him over to FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) agents after weeks in custody in Peshawar and Karachi in Pakistan, he said.
There were two Bangladeshis among the 759 detained in Guantanamo Bay Military Prison peopled by combatants, or supposedly so, hauled up from Afghanistan and Pakistan by the US.
The second prisoner from Bangladesh, Jamal Muhammad Al-deen, born on January 1, 1967, is from Feni.
In the US, the date January 1 is given to people whose birth dates are not normally known.
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