No record available: Mystery shrouds Turkish family’s ‘deportation’

FIA sources say IBMS record only shows Mesut Kacmaz’s arrival at Lahore in June 2016

ISLAMABAD: Deep mystery surrounds the reported deportation of Mesut Kacmaz, an official of the Pak-Turk School, and his family as no record of the extradition is available with the concerned authorities in Pakistan.

According to media reports, the Turk official and his family were flown out on a jet of the Turkish Airlines from Islamabad on Oct 14.

“There were Turkish police officers on the plane and the victims were handed over to them,” a report claimed. It added the Turkish authorities had taken the couple into their custody while the children were living with their grandparents.

However, the concerned quarters are still silent about their deportation from Pakistan and it remains a secret whether they were actually deported or not.



Sources in the Interior Ministry and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) told The Express Tribune that there is no record of any such deportation at Integrated Border Management System (IBMS), a system installed at the airports to check computerised arrival and departure of any traveler.

The sources said the IBMS record only shows arrival of Kacmaz – having passport number U03690406 – on June 6, 2016 via flight EY 241 at Lahore Airport, but there is no record of his departure.

Another source associated with the immigration process said the immigration formalities are required to be fulfilled if someone is being deported to any country.

“However, this is not the case with deportation of Kacmaz as the IBMS’s record reveals only his arrival details and is silent over his departure from Pakistan,” he added.

Interestingly, the Interior Ministry has not issued any rebuttal of the news reports about deportation of Kacmaz and his family. So it might be assumed that the Turk citizen and his family were actually deported.

When contacted, sources in the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said immigration of any passenger falls under the purview of the Interior Ministry. They said the CAA has nothing to do with it as it only deals with issues concerning airlines’ schedule of arrival and departure at the airports.



According to a source, the flight number is needed to identify whether some flight arrived or departed from a specific airport. “As no flight number [with regard to Turk nationals] is available, the CAA can’t confirm about the landing or departure of a specific airplane,” said the source.

Earlier, Mesut Kacmaz and his family, affiliated with Pak-Turk Schools, were abducted from their house in WAPDA Town of Lahore.

The Lahore High Court, while hearing a habeas corpus petition against the disappearance of Kacmez, his wife, and daughters – Huda, 17, and Fatma, 14 – had ordered the government not to deport them and put their names on the Exit Control List (ECL).

The Kacmazs were living in Pakistan under an asylum seeker certificate issued by UNHCR, which was valid till November 24, 2017.