ISLAMABAD, April 24: Investigations into the Swiss visa scam that broke a few weeks ago suggest that other European embassies could also be involved in the malpractice, Dawn learnt on Monday.

Background interviews with the officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and FIA revealed that the involvement of other European missions came to light after it transpired that the main accused Asher Francis had visited other European embassies to get the visas of his victims cancelled.

This was something unprecedented in diplomatic traditions.

However, no one in the foreign ministry had the courage to ask the European missions since when they were operating such an inter-European visa mechanism, which actually didn’t exist.

Secondly, huge number of visa stickers recovered from Asher Francis reaffirmed the belief of the investigators that the human trafficking scam involved other European embassies.

Asher Francis is just a small part of a big phenomenon that would never be uncovered fully, a source commented.

Perhaps the most unfortunate part of the dirty drama is that the victims complained that the FIA investigators appeared to be making them suffer for standing up for their rights and against injustice.

One of the victims, Salim Raza, told Dawn that the six families that initially came up with the case continued to be harassed by the FIA in the name of investigations.

“Sometimes we are asked to report in Islamabad at other times we are asked to present ourselves in Lahore,” he said, adding that they had been made “rolling stones”.

Most recently Shazia Farooq, one of the victims, was summoned by FIA to present herself with the passport as they wanted to check something, Mr Raza said. “We have unveiled the whole scam and all the accused including the diplomats running this human trafficking racket, but our country’s officialdom is not ready to accept our innocence,” he said.

Mr Raza, a Lahore-based businessman, says he alone has spent over Rs3 million in an attempt to seek justice and made 188 trips to Islamabad in this connection.

“We don’t want anything from the government except for a clearance that we have got nothing to do with the tampering of passports, which we had been previously accused of,” he said.

It is interesting to note that the national media focussed on the criminal aspect of the case, but no one has realised the impotence of the foreign ministry that has failed to act to get the visas of these victims restored, some of whose families have been split for over a year now for no fault of theirs.

It is recalled that the victims had been suffering for over a year now and had left no stone unturned to get justice.

Initially they met indifference from the government ministries and departments all of whom suspected them to be the guilty. This continued till the victims approached Lahore High Court and got directives in their favour and their case was highlighted in the media.

All the six victim families are middle-level business people, who frequently visited Europe and had multiple entry visas for a number of European countries.

Their visa applications with the Swiss embassy took unusually long and when they inquired about their cases they were told that their passports were found to be tampered and had been given to FIA. The prime victim, Ume Salma, had also been asked for sexual favours by Asher Francis for processing her case.

With this started their agonising tale, which still continues.

When the investigations into the scam started on the direction of Lahore High Court and intervention of some of the influential federal ministers, the Swiss embassy diplomats resisted, but eventually had to give in after FIA found out that the embassy had been retaining Ume Salma’s passport for over eight months without any justification. The evidence unfolded the whole scam.

Sources claimed that the Swiss embassy, in one way or the other, continued to stall the investigation and at one stage even gave protection to Asher Francis when police were hunting for him. It even arranged asylum for Asher Francis, but intervention by Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri foiled this attempt as his (Francis) name was put on exit control list.