RAWALPINDI: Five Chinese citizens arrested in different areas of the country were deported on Monday.

The five, two children and a woman among them, were brought to the Benazir Bhutto International Airport where they boarded a flight of  China’s Southern Airline for Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province.

Sources told Dawn that another Chinese national, Abduxur Ablmit, who was to accompany his compatriots, was off-loaded because the captain refused to accept him for unspecified reasons.

Ablmit, blindfolded and handcuffed like the other five, had been allotted a seat on the flight.

The deportees were taken to the plane through a special gate meant for VIPs. One of them was identified as Manzokra Mamad who was accompanied by a minor girl and a boy.

The reasons for their deportation could not be ascertained, but in the past Pakistani security agencies extradited Xinjiang separatists they had captured on at least three occasions—14 in 1997, seven in 2002 and nine in 2009.

Hasan Mahsum, a leader of the separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement (Etim), was killed by the Pakistan Army in October 2003 and another Etim leader Abdul Haq Turkistani was killed in a drone attack in January last year.