GUJRAT, April 9: Illegal immigration of people, aspiring to go abroad, is more than ever in Gujrat and its neighbouring districts.

The US embassy, after the deportation of Pakistanis from the US last month, has demanded a crackdown on the smugglers active in Gujrat, Gujranwala, Mandi Bahauddin, Jhelum and Sialkot.

Even the recent upheavals, the most prominent being the Sept 11 incident and the ongoing US aggression against Iraq have not dwindled the passion of the Pakistani youth to go abroad. The agents involved in the business have not been facing much hurdles due to ‘indifference’ of the authorities concerned.

During the late 70s and early 80s, it was not difficult to get a visa because there was not much trend to go abroad. However, as the western countries made their immigration policy strict, human traffickers got an opportunity to run the business. These traffickers have been using illegal channels to send the aspirants to the western countries with an alleged connivance of some government functionaries.

Information gleaned by this correspondent revealed that foreign countries had proved a death-trap for scores of illegal emigrants, who had been killed by the law-enforcers.

Last year, six residents of the Gujranwala division were killed in Greece by the Macedonian police, which claimed that they were Al Qaeda members and had designs to sabotage the US interests. Those killed were Ijaz Ahmad, Asif Javed, Riaz Ahmad, Omar Farooq, Khalid Iqbal and Bilal Shah.

Ijaz Ahmad, a resident of Mandi Bahauddin, had gone to Iran in February last year and met a human trafficker, Haji Nazir, also of Mandi Bahauddin. He reportedly told Ijaz that he would take $1,300 to send him to Istanbul, Turkey. Ijaz’s family gave the money guarantee to Nazir’s wife Irshad Begum. After two to three weeks, Ijaz informed his family on telephone that he had reached Istanbul through Haji Nazir and asked it to pay the promised amount to Nazir’s wife. His family handed over the amount to Irshad Begum.

It is learnt that Haji Nazir’s son Shabbir, who lives in Istanbul, sends people to Greece. Knowing this, Ijaz met Shabbir and asked how much money he would take to send him to Greece. It was settled at $2,300. A Pakistani, already living in Greece, gave the money guarantee to Shabbir for Ijaz.

Meanwhile, Ijaz’s family learnt on March 5 that the Macedonian police had killed six Pakistani youths. It contacted Shabbir in Istanbul and inquired about the whereabouts of Ijaz. Shabbir, who knew that Ijaz was one of the six youths killed in Macedonia, pacified his family by saying that he had been arrested by the Bulgarian police and awarded three-month sentence for illegally entering Bulgaria.

Thereafter, Ijaz’s family remained in touch with the trafficker, who did not tell the truth even after more than a month. However, a foreign reporter, Christopher Cooper (Wall Street Journal), investigated the matter and identified the names and addresses of the victims. The Ansar Burni Trust brought the bodies of the victims back from Macedonia.

Sources told Dawn that the agents had deep roots in Gujrat as they enjoyed support of the FIA officials, immigration staff at airports and local passport offices.

In the last five years, they said, more than 50 residents of Gujrat, Mandi Bahauddin and Jhelum had been deported from Turkey (Ankara and Istanbul) for possessing fake documents. Their names are available with this correspondent.

Those deported from Ashgabat are Imran, M Din, Riaz Ahmad and Tahir Mahmood. Altaf was deported from Rome in 1995, Afzal from Tashkent in 1996, Imran Wahid from Moscow in 2001 and Ashraf from Amman.

According to the sources, it was the duty of the FIA and the immigration staff to interrogate them at the time they were deported to trace the human traffickers who had sent them to these countries. They said the FIA was also responsible for getting a case registered against the person deported from any other country.

They said the higher authorities had sent a list of the names of the foregoing people (residents of Gujrat, Mandi Bahauddin and Jhelum), deported to Pakistan from different countries, on the government expenses, along with the details of amount to be recovered from them in the name of deportation or repatriation charges. The list of the deportees had been sent to the Gujrat Regional Passport Office for the recovery of the repatriation charges, they said.

They alleged that the FIA officials knew the names of the human traffickers active in Gujrat and other districts of the province, but were reluctant to take any action against.

They said in more than 95 per cent such cases, the agents got their clients boarded on aeroplanes with the help of the passport cell officials who did not take any legal action against those deported and handed them over to the agent concerned. The sources accused the FIA men of taking bribe separately for boarding and taking a deportee outside the airport.

The sources said: “If the FIA is not involved in irregularities, why does’n it take any disciplinary action those named earlier.”

They also said some local agents forged passports by replacing original photographs with new ones. They believed that the traffickers sought help from the officials of the passport cell for their clients having forged passports. They took Rs25,000 to Rs40,000 to do this job, the sources said.

They claimed that the traffickers gave Rs100,000 to Rs150,000 to the FIA or the passport cell staff for one client possessing fake documents for going to the European countries. They gave Rs20,000 to Rs30,000 for a deportee.

Unconfirmed reports said the Gujrat’s traffickers had sent at least 200,000 Pakistanis to Greece, Italy, Spain and other countries during the last decade.

Another source, who requested anonymity, told Dawn that a trafficker of Phata Noor Jamal sent the aspirants to Italy through Algeria. He said the agent had taken Rs650,000 each from five youths, including Amanat, in April 2002 to send them to Italy. The names of the other four could not be confirmed.

They gave their passports to the agent who informed them that he had obtained visas for Algeria. These youths were travelling by an Egyptian flight when the plane crashed while landing at Tunis airport on May 7, 2002, due to bad weather. Several passengers died, while the Pakistani youths were among the injured, the source said, adding the Egypt Air Company had promised to give $1,250 each as compensation to these Pakistani youths.

However, it could not be confirmed whether the agent, who had gone into hiding, had returned the money back to the youths.

According to another source, a human trafficker of Moeenuddinpur sends people to Germany through China and Russia. A few months ago, this agent collected Rs0.5 million each from at least 32 youths of Gujranwala, Gujrat, Kharian, Wazirabad and Mandi Bahauddin to send them to Germany. He took his clients by a bus to China where he reportedly informed the higher-ups about their illegal stay in China and the law-enforcers arrested them.

Meanwhile, the agent informed their families on telephone about their arrest and demanded Rs200,000 to ensure their release. However, these youths, ever since their release, had been running from pillar to post to get their money back from the agent, but to no avail.

Last year, the Moroccan government had deported more than 60 Pakistanis, five of them from Gujrat, who had gone to see the Morocco Cricket Cup, but reportedly overstayed there. In a letter to the Pakistan government, the sources said, the Moroccan government had expressed fear that these people might have plans to move illegally to another country.

Some people confirmed that these human traffickers had good relations with the Gujrat Regional Passport Office staff, and they could easily get a new passport for their client on a fictitious name. They claimed that they had obtained a passport of their client four times in two months.

Irshad Bhatti, assistant director at a local passport office, denied the charges.

Travel agents, while defending their business, said the Pakistanis killed by the Macedonians were not the members of the Al Qaeda. They said restrictions in getting a foreign visa had forced the Pakistanis, who dreamt of a better future, to hire the services of these traffickers. They didn’t even hesitate to take a risk. Although the Punjab government had planned to crack down on human traffickers, they were not sure which authority they should choose to take the initiative, the sources said.