Hero's welcome for doctor freed from jail

INDIA: Mobbed by TV cameramen, journalists and supporters, a 27-year-old doctor flew home to a hero's welcome in southern India after being freed from jail in Australia when terror charges against him were dropped.

Looking relaxed and smiling, Mohammed Haneef was whisked Sunday from the airport to his family's home, where a celebratory feast was being held, after flying from Brisbane, Australia, earlier in the day. Haneef's jailing had aroused waves of sympathy in his native India.

"What can give a mother more happiness? My child is free and he is coming home," Haneef's mother, Qurrath-Ul-Ain, said as she passed around sweets to cousins and neighbors at her home, which was decked out with strings of jasmine flowers, balloons and streamers.

In an emotional TV interview earlier, Haneef said he had no knowledge of his relatives' alleged involvement in a failed British terror attack last month and would not have kept quiet if he had. Haneef had been arrested July 2 at an airport in Brisbane as he was about to fly to India to see his wife and newborn daughter - just days after his second cousins in Britain were arrested in a failed terror plot.

In a paid interview broadcast Sunday on Australia's Nine Network, Haneef said supporting a terror organization was against his nature.

Bangalore, Monday, AP