Corning man deported, but to where?

Nasir Ali Mubarak, the Corning aircraft painter who was deported recently for violating the terms of his long-expired student visa, has gone missing and may be in a Pakistani prison. According to his lawyers, Mubarak was turned over by INS agents in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, to two plainclothes men who may have been agents of the Pakistani federal police.

Mubarak, who has a wife and two children here, has not been heard of since he left the United States on Aug. 29. The INS issued a blanket statement about Mubarak’s disappearance, saying that its agents followed standard procedure in escorting Mubarak to Pakistan. When pressed for details, however, an INS official would not say what information was given to prepare the Pakistani government for Mubarak’s arrival, nor would she divulge whether it is considered standard procedure for INS escorts to ask for identification from officials who are accepting a deportee.

A close relative of Mubarak’s confirmed that he received a call from someone claiming to be a Pakistani official, who said that Mubarak, 34, had indeed been taken into custody but declined to say what for. Mubarak, who raised government suspicion when it was discovered that he entered the country with a man later convicted of terrorist conspiracy, has not resided in Pakistan for about 30 years.