HYDERABAD: Mohd Ibrahim Zubair, a Hyderabad-based engineer turned Al Qaeda operative, has been deported to India from the US. He arrived in India on Wednesday, by a direct flight from San Francisco and landed at Amritsar, where he is now placed under the mandatory 14-day quarantine. It is learnt that after completing the quarantine, he will travel to Hyderabad.
Ibrahim, his brother Yahya Farooq Mohammad and two others, were arrested by the FBI in 2015, in connection with terror funding in November 2015.
In 2009, they travelled to Yemen, to meet the then Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki. However, they could only meet his associates and donated approximately $22,000. Al-Awlaki was killed in a US drone strike in 2011.
Born in Sharjah, 41-year-old Ibrahim had come to Hyderabad in the early 90s, to study engineering.
From Hyderabad, he moved to UAE and then to the US. There, Ibrahim studied engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 2001-2005.
In 2006, he moved to Toledo, Ohio, and also married a US citizen. He became a lawful permanent resident of the US around 2007.
Covid scare led to release
Mohd Ibrahim, who was sentenced to five years of imprisonment, has completed more than half of his prison term. Hence, he was released and deported in view of the pandemic