Bangladeshi-British diplomat Anwar Anwar Choudhury has been recalled to London from the Cayman Islands, where he was serving as the governor.
He has been temporarily withdrawn, the islands’ Premier Alden McLaughlin said in a statement from the UK, where he is a leading a delegation.
The Cayman Islands is an autonomous British Overseas Territory in the western Caribbean Sea. The 264-square-kilometre territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman.
Born in Sylhet, Choudhury has served as the British High Commissioner to Bangladesh between 2004 and 2008.
Months after taking the helm of the UK mission in Dhaka, he was targeted in a grenade attack in Sylhet, in which he was wounded and three others were killed.
McLaughlin said he was called to the office of UK Overseas Territories Minister Lord Ahmad and given the news.
“The minister formally advised me that His Excellency the Governor, Mr Anwar Choudhury, has been temporarily withdrawn from his post as governor of the Cayman Islands to allow the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to investigate a number of complaints against him,” McLaughlin said before adding that he was told the investigation could last four to six weeks.
The governor’s office released, confirming what McLaughlin had announced.
“Anwar Choudhury, Governor of the Cayman Islands, has been temporarily withdrawn from his post to allow the FCO to investigate a number of complaints against him,” the office’s statement read.
The Cayman News Service said no other details were given about the 58-year-old governor, who had so far received a warm welcome in Cayman. There is no indication of the nature of the complaints, whether those complaints were made by people here, in the UK or during any of Choudhury’s previous postings.
Choudhury is Cayman’s 13th territorial governor since the position was established in 1971. No previous governor has been withdrawn from service after just more than two months in that office.
He was the British Overseas Territory’s first non-British-born governor and its first Muslim governor.