ISLAMABAD, May 29: The Federal Investigation Agency has challenged reports about diplomatic dispatches from the Pakistan Embassy in Greece concerning presence of 10,000 Pakistani illegal immigrants in Turkey for onward travel to Europe.
Commenting on a Dawn report of May 28, the FIA said: “The veracity of the figure of 10,000 as being present in Turkey for pushing them into Greece and Italy is unfounded.”
The statement said the FIA could not agree that it did not have a strategy to counter human smugglers’ moves. It said the agency had formulated a strategy to overcome the menace of human smuggling and as a result the number of deportees had declined in 2007. It said the number of projected deportees for 2007 came to 4,851, compared with 5,165 in 2006, 13,316 in 2005 and 9,017 in 2004.
Meanwhile, Dawn stands by the report that was based on a dispatch from Pakistan’s Ambassador to Greece Rasheed S. Khan to the additional director-general (immigration), FIA, who received it on May 15. A copy of the dispatch dated May 9 is available with Dawn.
Before the dispatch, the ambassador had talked on phone with the said officer and had also sent a copy of the dispatch to the director-general (Europe) of the foreign affairs ministry.
The ambassador among other things had written that “according to information volunteered by some recent arrivals some 10,000 Pakistani immigrants are being held back in Turkey by the agents and to be pushed into Greece and Italy after announcement of fresh measures for legalisation of illegal immigrants”.
The very fact that the FIA has confirmed receiving over 21,000 illegal immigrants from Europe and its admission that only deportation can be the criterion for judging the extent of human smuggling is sufficient to prove that it has no idea as to how many people are staying in Turkey or Greece and Italy as illegal immigrants who must have travelled on fake documents with the commission and omission of the FIA staff through different routes.
If the FIA claim on the number of illegal immigrants is accepted, it means that a senior ambassador posted at one of the most important foreign destinations wrote irresponsible dispatches to its head office back home. The responsibility lies either with the FIA or the foreign affairs ministry and is a clear case of cover-up.
