DHAKA: A prisoner transfer agreement between United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bangladesh is expected to take effect in the first quarter of next year, reports UAE government-owned English-language daily The National on Wednesday.

Mohammed Imran, Bangladesh’s ambassador to the UAE, hoped that Bangladeshi inmates will soon begin to be repatriated and be closer to their families.

“We can hope [for] something good in the coming few months time,” he said.

Last week, the UAE and Bangladesh signed an “agreement on transfer of sentenced prisoners” when prime minister Sheikh Hasina visited the country.

Both countries also jointly agreed on security cooperation and handing over a plot of a land to build the UAE Embassy in Dhaka.

According to the embassy there are about 900 Bangladeshis serving jail terms in the UAE.

The agreement is reciprocal, but the ambassador hoped that “no UAE national is in Bangladeshi jails”.

Prisoners with more than six months remaining on their sentences will be the focus of the agreement.

“Our focus is to repatriate those inmates who are serving long or short jail terms. But there is a provision that remaining jail term should be more than six months,” he said.

If any inmate has three months left, he has to stay in prison and his case would not be processed and he has to complete it here in the UAE, the ambassador said.

The mission did not have details on how many out of the 900 have more than six months remaining on their sentences. These details would be known when all official formalities are completed and deal is implemented.

“The repatriation will be done individually by assessing case by case, and it’s not going to happen in bulk,” he said.

“As the deal is finalized now, the next stage is the implementation that would be done as early as possible,” he said.

He believed that by serving their jail terms back home, prisoners can be better rehabilitated and return to mainstream society to start a new life.

BDST: 0655 HRS, NOV 6, 2014