Lambs lead to lion: Two ‘humans’ take ‘smuggler’ to lock up
The suspects were attempting to travel to Paris on high-quality forged documents.
ISLAMABAD:
Soon after immigration officials caught them, two men who were trying to travel on forged French visas had their ‘agent’, the alleged human smuggler, arrested from the Benazir Bhutto International Airport parking lot on Friday.
Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) officials arrested Asadur Rehman and Gulzar Saleem, both residents of Sargodha, from the airport after their French visas were found to be fake. They were planning on flying PK-749 to Paris, FIA said.
“The immigration officials held them for questioning after their visas were found to be suspicious,” said FIA Immigration Shift In-charge Inspector Afzal Niazi. During the initial investigations, the arrested men told the FIA officials that the man who had arranged visas for them was waiting outside in the airport parking lot. FIA and airport security force acted quickly to locate and arrest the agent, Nicholas Danish Masih, in the parking lot.
He was waiting for his clients to board the plane so that he could receive the remaining half of the total fee from their families. Masih, a resident of Lal Kurti, Rawalpindi, is a professional human smuggler who had been sending people abroad on fake documents, FIA officials said.
“He was paid Rs300,000 for each the two men as the initial fee for arranging visas, with another Rs700,000 each to be paid after his clients got boarding passes and informed their families of the fact by phone,” said Niazi.
The immigration officials said the fake visas were of very high quality and could not be detected with the naked eye. They said they had to use ultraviolet lights to confirm that the visas were fake.
The arrest of the three men saved the national carrier from hefty fines they would have been liable to pay if the men were arrested on arrival in Paris, said Niazi. They were shifted to a lockup in the Anti-Human Trafficking Circle (AHTC) office in Rawalpindi for further investigation and legal action.
“The recovery of the fake visas proves that somebody is forging them locally and can produce quality fakes that closely resemble the genuine visas,” said Niazi.
Maseeh will be interrogated by AHTC officials, who said they would obtain his physical remand from the court on Saturday in order to investigate how he obtained the fake visas and to get more information on his network of human traffickers and smugglers.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 14th, 2012.
Soon after immigration officials caught them, two men who were trying to travel on forged French visas had their ‘agent’, the alleged human smuggler, arrested from the Benazir Bhutto International Airport parking lot on Friday.
Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) officials arrested Asadur Rehman and Gulzar Saleem, both residents of Sargodha, from the airport after their French visas were found to be fake. They were planning on flying PK-749 to Paris, FIA said.
“The immigration officials held them for questioning after their visas were found to be suspicious,” said FIA Immigration Shift In-charge Inspector Afzal Niazi. During the initial investigations, the arrested men told the FIA officials that the man who had arranged visas for them was waiting outside in the airport parking lot. FIA and airport security force acted quickly to locate and arrest the agent, Nicholas Danish Masih, in the parking lot.
He was waiting for his clients to board the plane so that he could receive the remaining half of the total fee from their families. Masih, a resident of Lal Kurti, Rawalpindi, is a professional human smuggler who had been sending people abroad on fake documents, FIA officials said.
“He was paid Rs300,000 for each the two men as the initial fee for arranging visas, with another Rs700,000 each to be paid after his clients got boarding passes and informed their families of the fact by phone,” said Niazi.
The immigration officials said the fake visas were of very high quality and could not be detected with the naked eye. They said they had to use ultraviolet lights to confirm that the visas were fake.
The arrest of the three men saved the national carrier from hefty fines they would have been liable to pay if the men were arrested on arrival in Paris, said Niazi. They were shifted to a lockup in the Anti-Human Trafficking Circle (AHTC) office in Rawalpindi for further investigation and legal action.
“The recovery of the fake visas proves that somebody is forging them locally and can produce quality fakes that closely resemble the genuine visas,” said Niazi.
Maseeh will be interrogated by AHTC officials, who said they would obtain his physical remand from the court on Saturday in order to investigate how he obtained the fake visas and to get more information on his network of human traffickers and smugglers.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 14th, 2012.