US deports Bangladeshi coup man

Mohiuddin Ahmed - sentenced to death

A former Bangladeshi army officer has been deported from the United States and then arrested on his arrival in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka.

Mohiuddin Ahmed was convicted in absentia in 1998 for his role in the 1975 military coup and assassination of President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Ahmed spent several years fighting his deportation from the US.

He was one of 15 people found guilty of killing Sheikh Mujibur. Most of them were sentenced to death.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the figurehead of the fight for the creation of Bangladesh which had been East Pakistan.

After independence in 1971, he went to Bangladesh as a national hero, having been in jail in Pakistan, and became president.

Mohiuddin Ahmed, a former major in the army, first went to the US in 1996, and applied to stay there permanently.

But he was ordered to be deported in 2002. Earlier this year an appeals court rejected his bid to have his case reviewed.

Although 12 of the 15 men found guilty in the trials were sentenced to death, the punishments have not been carried out because their appeals procedures were never completed.