Man returns home after 1989 disappearance

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DHAKA, Bangladesh, Aug. 2 (UPI) -- A Bangladeshi man missing since 1989 returned home with the help of the International Red Cross, which helped free him from a Pakistani jail, officials said.

Moslemuddin Sarkar, 52, was last seen by his family in 1989 when he left home for a job as a dock worker at Chittagong Seaport, the Press Trust of India reported.

His family didn't hear from him again until Monday when the International Committee of the Red Cross found him in a jail in Karachi.

"The International Red Cross arranged his return home under our restoring family links program. ... Moslemuddin Sarkar returned home yesterday," Roksana Zahan, the field tracing officer of the international humanitarian agency, said Wednesday.

Sarkar's whereabouts were reported to the ICRC by an anonymous tipster from the Bangladesh High Commission in Islamabad in May. He was then tracked down by the ICRC to the Karachi jail, where he had been for 15 of the 23 years he was gone.

"Pakistan police arrested him in 1997 while the Pakistani authorities freed him from the jail in Karachi on Monday night to be deported immediately as the Bangladesh High Commission officials extended their hands in preparing a travel document for him to return home and saw him off at the airport," Zahan said.

Why Sarkar was arrested and held in jail for 15 years was not reported.