DHAKA, Jan. 1 (Xinhuanet) -- Abul Kashem, the Bangladeshi truck driver who was abducted by an Iraqi guerilla group, returned home on New Year's eve, reported the Daily Star on Saturday.

    Kashem returned two weeks after Iraqi militants handed him overto rights activists in Iraq, ending his 55-day confinement.

    "I feel I am reborn," he was quoted as saying upon his landing at the Zia International Airport here with Bangladeshi Ambassador to Kuwait Nazrul Islam Khan who accompanied Kashem in a Bangladesh Biman flight.

    Kashem expressed his gratitude to Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, Foreign Minister M Morshed Khan and all others for their efforts to get him released.

    Kashem, working for a Kuwait company, was abducted by an extremist group called the Islamic Army in Iraq on October 19, 2004, along with another Sri Lankan driver from the same company, as they were driving with supplies for a US military camp in Iraq from Kuwait.

    According to a footage from Al-Jazeera television on Oct. 28, the extremist group said in a statement that the two hostages wereabducted before driving their trucks into a US base in Iraq, and they are being interrogated" in the religious (Islamic) court."

    When describing his ordeal during the captivity on Friday, the 45-year old Kashem said, after about 15 days, the Sri Lankan driver and he were taken to a nearby jungle, where the abductors ever killed two Iraqis on charges of collaboration with the US troops.

    The guerillas took a softer attitude towards Kashem "for being a Muslim and national of friendly Bangladesh" and brought him backto the hideout with assurance of release, added he.

    Kashem said the guerillas asked him to convey a warning asking all Bangladeshis "not to visit Iraq to help the occupation forces."

    The guerillas also gave him some money and winter clothes whilehanding him over to the rights activists, who arranged his immediate return to Kuwait and keeping in care of the Bangladesh mission.

    Explaining why he went to conflict-torn Iraq defying suggestions from the Bangladesh mission, the truck driver said thelure of money prompted him to take the risk.

    Kashem stayed in Dhaka on Friday in a relative's house. He willgo to his ancestral home in eastern district Feni on Saturday and stay there for some days before flying back to Kuwait to join his job.

    Bangladeshi ambassador Nazrul Islam Khan, who played an important role for his release, said he held talks with Kashem's employer who assured him of not sending Kashem to Iraq again. Enditem