ISLAMABAD, Aug 1: The UAE authorities on Monday detained leader of opposition in the National Assembly and MMA’s secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rahman at Dubai airport upon his arrival from Tripoli and later sent back home after keeping him in custody for several hours.

Maulana Fazl, who was scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia to attend a Rabita Alam Islami meeting starting on August 7 after a two-day stay in Dubai, was served with deportation orders. He was scheduled to return to Peshawar by a PIA flight at 4.30am, party sources said.

The sources said that the Maulana was shifted to a hotel after being detained at the airport in the afternoon as Pakistan embassy officials reached the spot to negotiate with the authorities the terms of his deportation.

The Maulana, who had left here for Libya on July 27, had arrived at the Dubai airport at 1am on Monday and visa was also stamped on his passport but then he was stopped from coming to the terminal.

Exact reasons for the detention and deportation of the opposition leader remain a mystery. It was presumed, however, that the MMA leader might have been denied entry into the UAE’s port city due to the worldwide alert following the London blasts and because of his past relations with Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban regime.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the government of Pakistan was in touch with the Dubai authorities and facts about the circumstances of detention of the Maulana were being ascertained.

Talking to the electronic media, the minister, however, noted that the MMA leader was on the black list of the UAE authorities for sometime and that he had better not gone there to face such hardship.

MMA’s acting secretary-general Hafiz Hussain Ahmed attributed the incident to what he called the failure of the Foreign Office to keep national leaders informed about the treatment they were expected to meet on foreign shores.

He told Dawn that Maulana Fazl was not aware of anything about his non-acceptance by the UAE. Otherwise he would not have gone there.

He said he had talked about the embarrassing situation arising out of the detention and deportation of the Maulana with the alliance chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed and he had taken a serious note of it which will be discussed upon his (Maulana Fazl’s) arrival.

Mr Ahmed regretted that while a large number of Sheikhs frequently visited Pakistan and held in high esteem here, their treatment with a national leader was disgraceful.