Three months after languishing at an undisclosed detention centre in Saudi Arabia where he was held incommunicado for a Facebook post on late Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Amjad Ali Bhat, 29, from J&K’s Baramulla has finally returned home. Amjad’s disappearance in Saudi Arabia and his worried family’s SOS to authorities of both countries were widely covered by TOI.Sharing his ordeal, Amjad, who returned Friday, said: “I was at my workplace in Dammam March 25, when at least six security officers, one in uniform, took me for questioning, which they said would take two hours. I complied. They took me to a police station. There, they confiscated my passport and other IDs before asking me to sign an acknowledgement.”
There, Amjad was asked about his March 5 FB post, to which he replied in the affirmative. “I said it was a condolence post, nothing more.”
Amjad won’t go abroad again, says his father
The officers then drove Amjad to a detention centre where he was confined with six others in a small room. “When I asked them about the charges, they only responded that I’ll get to know later,” Amjad said. There were people from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt and Syria held at the centre as well.“Questioning sessions continued almost every other day. I had doubts whether I would ever be released. I wasn’t even allowed to speak to my family during my detention,” he added.
Then came the moment which Amjad had been praying for. On June 25, he was told that he was being released, and sent to India. “I broke down in relief. The Saudi authorities had arranged a flight from Riyadh to Delhi and I finally reached Baramulla,” Amjad said.Amjad’s father, Ghulam Ali Bhat, a retired staffer at J&K handicrafts department, said: “The past three months were traumatic for us. Now that he is back, he has decided to find work in India and not go abroad again.”
