Mohiuddin Ahmed being taken to a district court after arriving at Dhaka airport on Monday. (AP)

Dhaka, June 18 (Reuters): The US today extradited Mohiuddin Ahmed who has been convicted for his part in killing Bangladesh’s independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman 32 years ago.

Ahmed arrived today on a Thai Airways flight accompanied by two US security officials. An immigration official at Dhaka airport confirmed Mohiuddin’s arrival after he was ordered to be deported by a court in Los Angeles. Mohiuddin was arrested by police at the airport.

Television footage showed Ahmed, cordoned by security officials, being hastily taken to a prison van which took him to a chief metropolitan magistrate’s court in downtown Dhaka.

Several vehicles of the elite anti-crime rapid action battalion and armed policemen escorted the van to the court.

After a brief hearing, Ahmed was ordered to be kept in a cell meant for prisoners facing the death penalty. Officials at the high-security Dhaka Central Jail confirmed receiving him at the jail.

Ahmed fled Bangladesh when the trial for killing Mujib and most of his family began in 1996. The high court in 2001 ordered 12 former army officers, including Mohiuddin, to hang for the murders.

The then President and six members of his family were shot dead in their home before dawn on August 15, 1975, in an army coup. Mohiuddin’s extradition brings to five the number of convicted former army officers in jail for the killings. All are awaiting execution, police said.

Of the remainder, six were believed to be in hiding abroad and were being hunted by Interpol. The twelfth ex-officer died in Zimbabwe while on the run a couple years ago, foreign ministry officials said.

The trial of the former officers was ordered only after Mujib’s daughter, Sheikh Hasina, became Prime Minister in 1996. Hasina and her younger sister were out of the country the day the other members of their family were killed. Mujib was the top leader of the Bengalis in former East Pakistan and helped lead the country during a war of independence from Pakistan in 1971.

Ahmed entered the US in 1996 on a visitor’s visa. He applied for permission to stay permanently, but was ordered to return to Bangladesh to face the criminal charges.

Ahmed’s immigration case dragged on for several years while he appealed the deportation order. In February, a San Francisco judge denied his petition to review the case, allowing the order to stand. Ahmed was arrested on March 13 at his Los Angeles home.

He represented the Bangladeshi government in a variety of foreign diplomatic posts in the two decades following Rahman’s assassination.