DHAKA, June 18: A former Bangladesh army officer arrested in the United States was on Monday flown back to Dhaka to face the death penalty for his role in a 1975 military coup.

Legal experts, however, said Mohiuddin A.K.M. Ahmed was unlikely to be executed soon, with the case still pending a hearing in the country’s Supreme Court.Two US Department of Homeland Security officials escorted Ahmed back to Bangladesh aboard a Thai Airways plane after he was extradited from California on Sunday, said Dhaka deputy police commissioner Khandaker Rafiqul Islam.

Ahmed, wearing a bullet-proof jacket and helmet, was hurried into a prison van as hundreds of police officers cordoned off the entrance of Dhaka’s Zia International airport, Islam said.

The former major, along with 11 other officers, was in 1998 sentenced to death in absentia for killing the country’s first president and founding leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, during a coup.

“Witnesses in the case told the court that he was one of the team of army officers who came to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s house to kill him and his family,” lawyer Anisul Haq said.“He was there when Mujib was gunned down,” said Haq, a government lawyer.—AFP