August 04, 2008	Monday	Sha'aban 1 429

RAWALPINDI, Aug 3: The government has decided to send a team of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to Turkey for a probe into human smugglers’ network after 30 illegal immigrants, mostly Pakistanis, were found dead in the outskirts of Istanbul on Wednesday.

Another 18 people were taken into custody by the Turkish authorities and taken to a local hospital. Seven of them were discharged and six were being treated for kidney problems because of severe dehydration.

Additional Director-General of FIA Mirza Yasin told Dawn that the agency was in contact with Pakistan’s consulate-general in Istanbul and was trying to figure out the exact number of Pakistanis among the people found dead last week.

He said a truck carrying 130 illegal immigrants, mostly from Afghanistan, Burma and Pakistan, was in the outskirts of Istanbul when the people stuffed in the vehicle started screaming for help when they felt suffocated.

By the time the truck driver stopped the vehicle, 30 of the people had died and 18 others were in a serious condition. The driver had escaped.

The Turkish police are investigating into the incident which has been termed a “humanitarian crisis”. The driver is reported to have escaped.

Mr Yasin said none of the relatives of the illegal immigrants had so far contacted his agency.

Most of the immigrants were young who wanted to go to Greece via Turkey.

Pakistan’s embassy in Greece had warned in May about an impending human smuggling crisis and said thousands of illegal immigrants, who had been transported to Turkey by human smugglers, were likely to be pushed into Greece and Italy.

Since then, a large number of illegal immigrants have been arrested in Turkey and deported to Pakistan.

A senior FIA official said nearly 12,000 illegal Pakistani immigrants had been deported from Turkey, Iran, Oman, Greece and Spain in 2007, and 7,000 this year.

“It is an unending crisis,” the FIA official said.

The gangs of human traffickers, he said, involved influential people in Pakistan who were linked to powerful gangs in Iran, Turkey and Greece.