[Dawn] A Bangladeshi citizen working for the United Nations...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks...
has been sprung after a year and a half abduction by Al Qaeda in Yemen
...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of...
, the prime minister’s office said on Thursday.
"I never thought I would return home," Akam Sofyol Anam told reÂporters in Dhaka, following his return a day earlier on Wednesday, calling the last 18 months "horrifying".
"I thought the bully boyz might kill me anytime", added Anam, a former army lieutenant colonel. "My days were miserable. There was a fear of death every day; it cannot be expressed in words — it is seen in films only."
In February 2022, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
...the latest incarnation of various Qaeda and Qaeda-allied groups, including the now-defunct Aden-Abyan Islamic Army that boomed the USS Cole in 2000...
(AQAP) kidnapped Anam and four others as they returned to Yemen’s southern port city of Aden after a field mission while working for UN Department of Safety and Security.
Anam said that he was not physically tortured, but had often been kept blindfolded.
"I couldn’t see the sky for months," he said, adding that he was moved repeatedly from place to place.
He said that he had "no idea how much money they wanted or what was their demand", adding that he thought he had been "targeted as I was an UN official." Anam "expressed his gratitude to Prime Minister
...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia show such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as
the Battling Begums...
for her role in rescuing him", the premier’s office said, releasing a picture of the two meeting.