Pakistani officials say an American citizen who previously was deported from Pakistan and blacklisted years ago has been arrested upon returning to the country.
Sarfaraz Hussain, a spokesman for Pakistan’s Interior Ministry, said on August 6 that the country’s Federal Investigation Agency arrested Mathew Craig Barrett at an Islamabad guesthouse.
Barrett, a 33-year-old from Alabama, was arrested and deported from Pakistan in 2011 after being found in the Fateh Jang area, near a secret military research facility.
Hussain did not elaborate on Barrett’s previous arrest, but said, "If someone was blacklisted, there should have been something serious."
Barrett had lived in Pakistan for four years before he was deported. He married a Pakistani woman and had two children.
In a letter smuggled from jail in 2011 to The Guardian newspaper, Barret strongly denied he was a spy.
He claimed he was a victim of simmering tensions at the time between the U.S. and Pakistani governments.