ISLAMABAD, Jan 12: Pakistan has arrested an alleged lynchpin in the country's notorious human smuggling racket who is said to have trafficked thousands of people to the West, officials said on Wednesday

Mohammad Hanif was captured in Karachi last week following a tip-off by FIA, they said. "Hanif is the biggest catch in the drive against human smugglers," Federal Investigation Agency official Iqbal Mahmood told AFP.

"He has smuggled out thousands of people, mostly to the UK and other European countries since 1996," he added. People smuggling is a major problem in Pakistan and President Pervez Musharraf's government has launched a crackdown on traffickers to stamp out the problem.

With unemployment at more than eight per cent, many Pakistanis see foreign jobs as the only way to survive and economic migrants often pay agents thousands of dollars for false documents to sneak into foreign countries.

Authorities recovered more than 500 passports, fake visa stamps and hundreds of blank booklets from Hanif's possession, Mahmood said. "We have charged the suspect and are conducting further interrogation," he added.

There are no official estimates on how many Pakistanis go abroad illegally, but thousands are repatriated every year. The Gulf Sultanate of Oman alone has returned more than 33,000 Pakistanis during the last four years, according to officials. -AFP