The cleric, Mohammed Hussein Ibrahimi, 35, was kidnapped from outside the International Islamic College of Advanced Studies, Brickdam on April 2. He was director of the institution.

According to Kadir, Ibrahimi's remains left Guyana on Friday for Iran. The body was scheduled to arrive there about 6:00 hrs yesterday.

Kadir said that Ibrahimi's relatives and members of the Muslim fraternity were to perform `Janaaza' yesterday.

The dead man's wife, Shahanaz Ibrahimi, left Guyana on Wednesday for Venezuela en route to Iran to attend her husband's funeral.

The woman, who was pregnant with the couple's first child when Ibrahami was kidnapped, recently gave birth to a healthy baby.

On May 4, the police acted on a tip off and visited a location just off the Soesdyke/Linden Highway on the St. Cuthbert's Mission trail. There, they dug up the cleric's partly decomposed body. The body bore two gunshot wounds to the head. Ibrahimi's hands and feet were bound with duct tape and he was clad in the clothes he was wearing when he was abducted.

His colleagues identified him by a silver cap on his dentures, and a silver ring he was wearing.

The Iranian policemen for the International Policing Organisation (Interpol) who were here to investigate Ibrahimi's abduction have since left the country.

Guyana Police Force spokesman, John Sauers, told the Sunday Chronicle that the case is still open and investigations are ongoing.

2002-03 crime wave inquiry likely
THOSE who have been calling for an inquiry into the crime wave that resulted in the loss of life of more than two dozen policemen and scores of civilians in the wake of the Mash Day 2002 prison escape may soon have their way.

President Bharrat Jagdeo said in a statement Friday announcing the setting up of a Presidential Commission of Inquiry into death squad allegations against Home Affairs Minister Ronald Gajraj, said his government is giving serious consideration to an inquiry into the crime wave similar to the one he has just established.

“At a subsequent time, an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the February 23, 2002 jailbreak, the plight of victims of the criminal violence and political linkages to the 2002/2003 crime wave will be seriously considered,” he said.

In 2002, described in a newspaper review as “the year of living dangerously,” Guyanese endured an unprecedented surge in violent crimes that placed Guyana with Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago as being among the most dangerous places for tourists and foreign investors.

But the crime wave continued the following year, subsiding only after a retooled police combined forces with the army and conducted several cordon-and search operations in Buxton, the East Coast Demerara village said to have been a criminal haven.