February 22, 2007	Thursday	Safar 4, 1428

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LAHORE, Feb 21: The Spanish government will deport 39 Pakistanis this week after confirmation that they are ‘illegal immigrants’.

Federal Investigation Agency officials told Dawn on Wednesday that the deportees would arrive Pakistan in a couple of days.

The Pakistani ambassador to Spain had written to the Interior Ministry about the detention of 131 Asians by the Spanish authorities for illegally crossing into their border via a sea route about 40 days ago. The ambassador asked the ministry to send a team there to identify Pakistanis among the arrested people.

The ministry sent a two-member team who identified 39 of them Pakistanis after checking their record in the National Database Authority’s record. Most of them were from Rawalpindi, Khanewal, Gujranwala, Peshawar and Karachi, officials said, adding that an Indian team had already identified 54 of them as its nationals.

They said the deported people would be taken into custody after their arrival to know about the trafficker. “Hopefully we will get a lead to the agents involved in sending people to the European countries on forged documents,” they said.

They said that most of the 39 Pakistanis reached there via African countries. “Some reached Dubai on genuine documents and paid money to African agents to arrange their travel to Cannari Island, Spain,” they added.

FIA officials claimed that no other Pakistani was languishing in the Spanish prisons.

Sources said many illegal Pakistani immigrants were also languishing in Turkey and Greece jails but the federal government not trying to secure their release. They reportedly reached there via Iran.

Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Greece had formed a working group to address the human smuggling, however, the group has yet to finalise the deportation of illegal immigrants.

A majority of the people detained in Turkey and Greece are reportedly from Gujrat, Gujranwala, Mandi Bahauddin, Sialkot and Malikwal.