DHAKA, 18 June 2007 — Convicted killer of Bangladesh’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, retired Lt. Col. Mohiuddin Ahmed has been deported from the United States and is scheduled to arrive in Dhaka today.
Dr. Iftikhar Ahmed Chowdhry, foreign affairs adviser to the caretaker government, told reporters yesterday, “The process of Mohiuddin’s deportation has begun.”
Replying to a question Iftikhar said, “We’ve just received a communication from our consul general in Washington that the process of his deportation has begun.” The adviser did not give details of the airline carrying Mohiuddin back home or his possible arrival time in Dhaka. Two US cops were escorting the condemned convict, he said. Sources said Mohiuddin boarded an aircraft in Los Angeles and would arrive at the Zia International Airport today.
Under US law, deportees are normally escorted to their country of origin by US security men. The US Department of Homeland Security initiated the deportation process on Thursday following the rejection of Mohiuddin’s appeal by a Los Angeles court. Mohiuddin, now 60, was a major in the Bangladesh Army when Mujib was assassinated on Aug. 15, 1975. Mohiuddin was tried in absentia and sentenced to death in 1998.
Bangladesh Faces ‘Unusual’ Monsoon
Flood-prone Bangladesh is bracing for an unusual and unpredictable monsoon this year, with environment experts and officials blaming global warming, melting Himalayan glaciers, silted rivers and unplanned roads. Heavy rains last week triggered landslides in the southern port city of Chittagong, burying at least 128 people alive.
Floods caused by days of torrential rain, described by weather officials as unusually heavy and devastating, inundated at least a dozen out of Bangladesh’s 64 administrative districts.
All major rivers including those flowing from the Himalayas through India have passed danger levels, flooding many villages and eroding vast tracts of land, leaving thousands homeless.
In the northern district of Bogra, hundreds of mud-walled houses collapsed.
Although the monsoon officially began only on June 7, already at least 30 people have been killed across the country in flooding which has damaged crops awaiting harvest and washed away dozens of fish farms, local officials said.
Farmers in other regions welcomed the early rains that had helped them till and sow their land with rice and jute. But they feared that more floods, which experts predict could hit again around mid-July, would damage the country’s prime agriculture sector, which accounts for more than 20 percent of GDP.
“Global warming, silting of the rivers and unplanned road construction have changed the routine of the flooding in Bangladesh,” said Sajedul Karim, a senior director at the Flood Forecasting and Warning Center in Dhaka.
“Now people often suffer more from months of waterlogging because the floods cannot recede quickly,” he told Reuters.
