"He (Mohiuddin Ahmed) is expected to board a Dhaka bound plane Sunday morning (Bangladesh time) and will arrive in Dhaka by Monday noon," Acting Foreign Secretary Touhid Hossein told The Daily Star yesterday.

"The US court concerned has already informed us verbally about his (Mohiuddin) deportation," the foreign secretary added.

Home Ministry sources said Mohiuddin Ahmed will be arrested on arrival.

When contacted last night, Home Affairs Secretary Abdul Karim said, "Proper legal steps will be taken against Mohiuddin Ahmed."

The acting foreign secretary said, "Process of Mohiuddin's deportation is their (US) judicial concern...uncertainty will prevail until his arrival in Dhaka. We are keeping contact with the counsel office at Los Angeles in this regard."

Meanwhile, family and friends of Mohiuddin have appealed to Canada to grant him asylum. A Canadian daily newspaper on May 29 reported that the US authorities were set to deport Mohiuddin soon.

Mohiuddin was sentenced to death in Dhaka in his absence in 1998 for his role in the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975.

US federal immigration agents arrested him at his Los Angeles residence on May 15.

Mohiuddin entered the United States in 1996 on a visitor's visa soon after the Awami League had assumed office. Since then he has been staying in the United States illegally.

He applied for staying permanently in the United States, but an immigration judge in 2002 ordered him to be deported.

The Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina urged the US government to extradite Mohiuddin who, along with 14 others, was sentenced to death in 1998 for the murder of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

On November 8, 1998, the Dhaka District and Sessions Judge Quazi Golam Rasul sentenced 15 of the 19 accused in the case to death. Only three of the convicts were in the dock during the pronouncement of the judgement.