A Canadian man who returned home to Bangladesh to attend his daughter's wedding was arrested after he was mistakenly thought to be a key suspect in the 1981 murder of the country's president.

Moinul Islam a 'retired Bangladeshi major' is a Canadian citizen and has been living in Toronto for more than a decade, according to his family.

Late President Ziaur Rahman

Islam's wife, Rousan Ara Islam told Bangladeshi media that her husband is now being held and interrogated for allegedly deserting the army and leaving for Canada.

She said her husband returned to the country from Canada on August 20 on the occasion of his daughter's marriage on September 16.

Rousan expressed surprise at her husband's arrest, telling Malaysia's The Star newspaper, "When they came to arrest him, saying 'you are Major Mozaffar', he gave them his identity.

"But they nabbed him ignoring his claim."

Rousan said Moin had sent a resignation letter to the military and left the country for the USA and later shifted to Canada in 1989.

The actual suspect Major Mozaffar Hossain is thought to be in Canada, according to Bangladeshi media reports.

Canada is also home to at least three men charged by Bangladesh in connection with the 1975 murder of the country's first prime minister and president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Rahman and 15 members of his family were assassinated at home in Dhaka during a military coup.

Two of them--Najmul Ansar and Kismat Hashem--have become Canadian citizens while a third Nur Chowdhury was seeking refugee status in 2000.

Ansar was last reported to be working as an accountant for an Ottawa-based crown corporation while Hashim was employed by an Montreal-based electronics company.

All three have denied the charges against them.

Meanwhile, the Bangladesh government is gearing up for more nationwide bomb attacks, citing intelligence reports that Islamist militants and outlawed extremists have joined hands to attack important establishments in a bid to force the government to keep their hands off them.

The government has put law-enforcement and intelligence agencies on high alert since the Aug 17 attacks which saw 459 bombs being activated in 63 of the country's 64 districts within a single morning.

Two people were killed and more than 300 injured. As many as 300 people have been arrested in subsequent investigations, with 203 still in custody.

Islamist militants have also issued death threats against Hindu journalists for reporting on the Aug 17 attacks.

They warned that journalists of Hindu faith do not have any right to write on the Islamist outfits, in several letters.

"Our aim is to establish Islamic rule in Bangladesh through an armed revolution," the letters said.