Terror financing suspect Zubair brought to Hyderabad from US

Hyderabad(Telangana),27 May(HS): Mohammad Ibrahim Zubair, who was convicted in the US for terror funding the Al-Qaeda and deported last week has been sent to quarantine at his home in Hyderabad’s Alwal.

After the graduation in Hyderabad, he left for Sharjah and from there went to the US to join his brother, Yahya Farooq Mohammad, and pursue higher studies.

According to a release of US Justice Department in 2018, he studied engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 2001 through 2005. In or around 2006, he moved to Toledo, Ohio, and married a US citizen. He became a lawful permanent resident of the US around 2007.

Zubair, his brother and two others were arrested in 2011 on charges of terror financing. He was convicted for raising money for Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, who was designated a terrorist by the US in 2009 and killed in a drone strike in 2011 in Yemen.

Mohammad Ibrahim Zubair, 40, who reached here late on Tuesday, has been kept in quarantine at his home in Alwal under the limits of Cyberabad police commissioner.

The fact that he was kept under home quarantine and not at state-run facility indicate that Zubair may not be subjected to any investigations.

A special flight from the US, carrying 168 deportees, including Zubair had landed in Amritsar on 19 May. He was kept at a quarantine centre in Amritsar and was reportedly flown to Nagpur on Tuesday.

It was immediately not clear if Cyberabad police would question him after he completes the 14-day quarantine period.

“He was convicted in some other country. He has no case pending against him here,” the police official said. Zubair, who is said to have been born in Sharjah, graduated in engineering from a private college in Hyderabad in the late 1990s.