Curbing crime: FIA arrests five alleged human traffickers

KARACHI:

The anti-human trafficking circle (AHTC) of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) claims to have apprehended at least five suspects allegedly involved in human trafficking.

The arrests were disclosed during a press conference held by AHTC deputy director Ashfaq Alam at his office on Friday afternoon. Alam informed the media that the arrests were made during two separate raids and the suspects were involved in cheating innocent people and extorting money on the pretext of sending them abroad for employment. After receiving the money, the suspects disappeared.

In the first raid, two human traffickers, Ali Asif and Asif Sattar, were arrested, both were on the AHTC Karachi’s top 20 list of most wanted persons. They were involved in more than 12 cases of human trafficking and Asif was also nominated in the red book of Most Wanted Human Traffickers 2014-2015, said Alam.

Three ‘human traffickers’ arrested

Separately, the AHTC also arrested three other human traffickers - Muhammad Bashir, Khan Afsar and Abdul Rasheed. Their arrests were made when AHTC officials received information that some human traffickers involved in trafficking Pakistani citizens from Mand Billo in Balochistan to Muscat, Turkey, Greece and the UAE via Iran were in the Cantonment Station Karachi area, along with the victims who were to be sent to Greece without travel documents.

Alam said that the suspects are residents of Karachi and were sub-agents of other human traffickers, Shahzaib alias Zeeshan and Shani who operate from Greece and Abdul Hameed Baloch and Moosa Baloch operating from Karachi and Mand Billo.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 27^th, 2016.