Moments later, several others alighted from two cars and surrounded him. They introduced themselves as immigration officers and asked the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) card holder whether he had a valid visa.
He did not, but the UNHCR card allows him to stay in Malaysia.
Nonetheless, it would be the start of a six-day detention for Khairuzzaman for overstaying, but he told FMT recently the arrest did not surprise him.
Last week, Bangladesh state minister for foreign affairs Shahriar Alam had said Khairuzzaman will be brought back home and could be investigated over the jail killings of 1975.
“As far as I understand, there is scope to interrogate him again,” he said, adding that the home and law ministries will check whether the case can be revived.
In 2010, the Bangladeshi government had approached the Supreme Court for a retrial of the 1975 killings, but the country’s attorney-general was told that a case cannot be tried twice. The case was withdrawn.
Khairuzzaman said the high commission started to inquire about him eight months ago through various Bangladeshi nationals living here.
“But these nationals were calling me to warn me to be careful. ‘Don’t go here, don’t go there.’
“The high commission was asking for my residential address, and Bangladeshi authorities have also gone to my home in Dhaka and my hometown looking for me.”
Khairuzzaman became the Bangladeshi high commissioner to Malaysia in 2007 but refused to return after he was recalled when the Awami League rose to power in 2009.
The former envoy said he took his accumulated leave of six months and subsequently asked for early retirement, adding that he stayed back as there were threats on his life from certain quarters in the ruling party then. He then successfully applied for a UNHCR refugee status.
He spent nearly five years behind bars after he was recalled in 1996 from Manila, where he was serving as his country’s envoy. The government accused him of involvement in the murder of four of Rahman’s aides in a case known as the jail killings.
He was among several diplomats around the world who were told to return to Bangladesh in six days, but he was the only one to do so.
The other diplomats were tried in absentia and sentenced to death, but the courts could not find enough evidence to charge Khairuzzaman. Amnesty International would later declare him as a political prisoner and a prisoner of conscience.
The country’s courts eventually acquitted Khairuzzaman, who then got his job back through an administrative tribunal before rising up the ranks in the foreign ministry and being posted to Myanmar and Malaysia as high commissioner.
Commenting on media reports in Bangladesh quoting government officials as saying that he should be brought back to be investigated again for alleged involvement in the 1975 incident, Khairuzzaman said the claims were all fabricated.
“The government just wants political mileage and to divert attention away from the present crisis it is facing.” He chose not to elaborate.
The former diplomat’s legal team has said his detention in Malaysia was unlawful since he is a political asylum seeker with a UNHCR card and has not committed any immigration violation.
On Feb 15, the Kuala Lumpur High Court granted an interim order against the immigration department’s intention to deport Khairuzzaman to Dhaka.
“I want to thank the Malaysian government and the judiciary system for this,” he said. “I also appreciate the immigration department for treating me well during my arrest.
“I do not think I will get a fair trial if I return.”