U.S. returns inmate to Bangladesh

U.S. authorities repatriated a Bangladeshi man Sunday after years of imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a police official said.

“We are interrogating him,” Tahera Banu, an official at the airport police station in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, said by telephone.

The 28-year-old man’s name, according to the Pentagon, is Mubarak Hussain bin Abul Hashem, Banu said without giving further details.

He was among 17 detainees repatriated this weekend to Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and Kazakhstan, the Pentagon said.

Police did not immediately allow reporters or relatives to talk to the Bangladeshi man.

The repatriated prisoner’s father, Abul Hashem, told reporters that he sent his son to study at an Islamic school in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1998.

After two years of study, the son taught for a year at the school before losing touch with his family, his father said.

In 2004, Abul Hashem first learned from the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society that his son had been incarcerated at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay.

He said he sought the Red Crescent Society’s help this year in bringing his son home. Officials of the organization could not be reached for comment.

Another Bangladeshi man remains at Guantanamo Bay, the Pentagon said.

The man, identified as 39-year-old Jamal Muhammad al Deen, was captured in Pakistan. No other details were available about him.