SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 29: Within the next few days, a Pakistani businessman from Corning, a small town in northern California, will be escorted onto an airplane for a long, tedious flight to Pakistan, his wrists in handcuffs, reports the daily Sacramento Bee.

The paper says the trip will come after weeks of insinuations from the US authorities that Nasir Ali Mubarak, a Corning resident for five years, either has links with terrorists or is one himself but they never formalized the allegations and have yet to prove them.

Mubarak, who has been confined in jail since early June, agreed last week not to fight the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) on violation and to be deported to Pakistan.

The paper says Mubarak’s allies — and he has many here and in nearby Red Bluff — believe that the US government has bullied a friendly, hardworking man whose one major fault was a tangled romantic life. Mubarak’s lawyer, Marc Van Der Hout, said the fact US authorities were not fighting the departure was telling. “Given that the government is willing to deport him demonstrates that there was nothing to the allegations of terrorism,” he said. Otherwise, he added, “they would have locked him up for a long time.”

Federal officials refuse to discuss the case. So when Mubarak’s plane departs, one sizeable question will linger: “Is he a terrorist or an unwitting victim of the war on terrorism?” the report says.

Nasir Mubarak, born in Pakistan on Sept 2, 1967, arrived in San Antonio, Texas, in November 1991 with a one-year student visa to attend a flight school.

In September, 1997, Mubarak, then 30, married 18-year-old Automne Burton. They soon filed papers with the Immigration and Naturalization Service seeking permanent residency for Mubarak based on his marriage to a US citizen. However, the couple did not attend any of the three interviews scheduled with INS officials, and their request was denied in early 1999. The marriage was dissolved in November 1999. Less than a week after the divorce was finalized, Mubarak married Stephanie Jolley, then 26.

Finally, all seemed well for Mubarak. His newest request for legal residency was progressing. However, things changed for Mubarak after the Sept 11 attacks. Hours after the attacks, two FBI agents showed up at Mubarak’s business to interview him. He has been in detention since then.