Islamabad:
The survivors of the tragedy of the Morocco boat narrated a heartbreaking story of “inhuman treatment” that hired them human smuggers, during the interrogation of the Federal Research Agency (FIA) upon arrival at the Islamabad airport, they said on Friday the Friday the authorities.
Seven more survivors returned home on Friday, which increased the total number of deportees from Morocco to 14, they said. Immediately after arrival, they were taken to the custody of the FIA to interrogate. Some of the returnees were injured, they added.
The tragic incident occurred on January 16, when a boat, which transported irregular migrants from Mauritania to Spain, overturned on the Moroccan coast, killing 46 people. The boat, which had left Mauritania on January 2, had 86 people on board, 66 of them were the Pakistani citizens.
The Moroccan authorities reported that the accident occurred at the sea off the coast of Dakhla, and rescued 36 survivors. Last week, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that 22 Pakistani citizens were among the survivors and would be repatriated to Pakistan in lots.
Seven Pakistan arrived in Pakistan this week, while another lot of seven survivors, Mehtab, Muhammad Khaliq, Gul Shamir, Waseem, Ali Hassan, Bilawal Iqbal and Umar Farooq, arrived on Friday. During the interrogation, they talked about torture of human smugglers.
The FIA officials said that the people who returned belonged to the districts of Gujarat, Sheikhupura, Sialkot, Mandi Bahauddin, Nareowal and Rawalpindi of Punjab. They added that these people had made the failed attempt to go to Spain illegally through Dubai and Senegal.
According to the information obtained from the returnees, officials said, paid RS2.2 to 3.5 million each to the agents, which belonged to different parts of Punjab for traveling to Spain. Initially, they were sent to Dubai and then Ethiopia and Senegal in Visa. From Senegal they were sent to Spain by sea.
“After completing half of the air trip, they were taken to Senegal, from where they were delivered to the human smugglers to travel forward in Mauritania,” said an official. He added that the smuggers began to torture them from the third day of their trip in a small boat.
According to the official, the victims endured hunger and thirst. They revealed that the smuggers would throw sick passengers in the village. The passengers said that the last day, when the boat sank, the conditions were so worse that they had to drink seawater.
The FIA said that those who returned passengers were being delivered to the team in the FIA area concerned with greater investigation to burst the human smuggling networks operating in Pakistan. Based on the last interrogation, a facilitator, Abdul Ghaffar, had been arrested by the FIA.
