Gujarat: A team of senior government officials will be sent to Morocco today (Saturday) to assess the situation and confirm the loss of Pakistani lives in the Atlantic migrant boat tragedy that occurred in waters between Mauritania and Morocco earlier this month. Ru.
According to reports, 44 of the 65 Pakistani migrants on board drowned or died after being tortured, and 10 bodies were recovered. At least 19 people survived, according to media reports.
The survivors and bodies are now in Dakhla, a small town near the coast of Morocco.
Sources told Dawn that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has decided to send an official team to Morocco, which includes Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Additional Director-General (North) Mounir Mars; Home Secretary Salman Chaudhary, the Directorate of General Information and Communications added that representatives from the Ministry of External Affairs were included.
They said officials would visit the Moroccan capital Rabat and Dakhla, where they would assess the situation and compile a detailed report to submit to the prime minister.
Meanwhile, the FIA has registered three cases against those suspected of illegally sending deliberate migrants abroad. The case has been filed against traffickers in Gujrat and Sialkot districts along with FIA crime circles in Gujranwala and Gujrat.
The victims also belonged to Sialkot and Mandi Bahauddin districts of the region.
According to one of the people in the FIR filed on Friday, the complainant Shabnam Arfan of Buda Goraya village in Daska tehsil of Sialkot district was represented by her husband Arfan and brother Mohammad Arslan as local agents. He claimed that Asghar Sindi and his accomplice Rana Osama had booked a trip to Europe for him. 4 million per person for employment.
According to her, the agent promised to fly them to Spain, after which they left for Ethiopia from Faisalabad airport on September 24 via Dubai. From Ethiopia, they were taken to Senegal and Mauritania, where the agency sent them by plane, she said. boat.
Agents told her in a WhatsApp call on January 6 that her husband and brother had arrived in Spain, and she asked for confirmation calls from both families, but agents refused to arrange a call. She said he never contacted her after that.
According to family members of the victims, only two of the 28 people from four villages in Gujarat state survived, while the rest were either missing or believed dead. Survivors, including one Uzair Butt, have detailed their alleged ordeal at the hands of traffickers and law enforcement officials.
Survivors said the suspected traffickers, some of them Africans, demanded more money, killed four to five people every day and dumped their bodies in the sea.
One of those arrested by the FIA was a woman who was accused of accepting cash from the victim on behalf of her son.
Other family members of the agent had fled the village when the FIA team conducted a raid to arrest the suspects involved in the heinous crime.
Published at Dawn on January 18, 2025
