MUAR: After 13 years of waiting, relatives of Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohamed Nazir Lep, 40, have finally received the much-awaited news that restored their hopes of being reunited.
Nazir had been locked up in the United States’s top-security island garrison in Cuba since 2006.
His brother Zahbah Lep, 58, said there was not a single day that went by without them praying for his return.
“We are so happy to know that our younger brother may finally be transferred back… he has been detained there for far too long.
“Even though it’s been 13 years, we feel like we have not seen our little brother for more than 20 years,” he said when met by the New Straits Times at his house here.
Zahbah, the eldest of eight siblings, said their close-knit family was delighted by the news and was prepared to provide Nazir the support he needed to move on.
“As long as we can visit him, we don’t mind if he is detained here. Now, we have to depend solely on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to provide us with updates on his wellbeing.
“Our family bond is strong and we are close to each other. So I don’t think we will have any problems providing him with support.”
Zahbah said the last time he spoke to Nazir, known as Basir Lep among his acquaintances, was in June.
“We talked about our family. Nazir misses his family very much. We can see he really wants to come home. Since he was detained, his mother had died, and recently, a sister who was very close to him has also died. The news of their passing hit him hard.
“That is why whenever I get the chance to talk to him, I always remind him that if he has the opportunity to come back, he should make use of it. If not, he will never be able to see his family in this world.”
Their mother, Zahbah said, missed Nazir so much that it started to affect her health.
“She missed her son very much. A week before she died, she dreamt of meeting Nazir. The dream was so vivid, so real that she woke up and went to look for him in the kitchen.
“She said they were eating together, and then, Nazir hugged her. She felt satisfied. A week later, she fell ill, and just before she went into a coma, she grabbed me and whispered ‘go look for your brother’,” said Zahbah.
Their mother died on March 17, 2009, from heart complications.
Nazir’s father died 19 days before he was born.
Zahbah said his younger brother, fondly known as “Pak J”, was raised and showered with love.
“He was the youngest and his age gap with other siblings is very wide. So, he got a lot of attention from his mother and other siblings as well.
“He was lucky that the other siblings had all grown up and started working, which allowed him to get everything he wanted.”
Zahbah said none of their family members knew of Nazir’s involvement in militant activities until they were informed by police that he had been detained in Bangkok.
“He was 16 when he started gravitating towards Islamic politics. But he had always been a good and an obedient brother. He was studying at Politeknik Sultan Abdul Halim together with Farik when he started joining the Jemaah Islamiah and Tarekat groups.
“That was when he started to talk about sekolah pondok and tabligh, but I didn’t pay much attention to that. If I had known that he would join militant groups, I would have put a stop to it there and then.”
Nazir, he said, left for Kuala Lumpur to stay with his other brother, Najib Lep, after finding work at the airport.
“One thing that I would have done had I known that this would happen is that I would never have allowed him to go to Kuala Lumpur.
“He joined the Territorial Army (Askar Wataniah) to learn military skills before going to Afghanistan.
“I was shocked when I was shown a photo of him clad in battle fatigues with Osama bin Laden in the desert by the Special Branch officers. I just could not believe that he was capable of doing that.”