LAHORE  - A plane packed with Pakistani deportees from Greece will land at Allama Iqbal International Airport on November 14, said the sources in the Federal Investigation Agency.
They said the deportees would be received by FIA immigration authorities deputed at the Lahore airport. All of them would be shifted to Anti-Human Trafficking Cell for further interrogation. “We will send them AHTC only to ascertain the involvement of human smugglers who send them illegally to Greece,” said an FIA officer while talking to The Nation. To a question about the number of deportees, he said it was not yet clear but it was informed by the Greek authorities that a special plane will reach Lahore carrying deportees on November 14 at 7:30 am.
Sources in the FIA said the human smuggling was on the rise in the country especially in upper Punjab districts, including Gujranwala, Gujrat, Sialkot, Mandi Bahauddin, Lala Musa, Kharian and Jhelum.
They said human smuggling was patronised by the influential people and sometimes also by the parliamentarians due to which action against them could never be taken properly. Only cosmetic measures were taken to curb human smuggling and real accused are still at large.
It is worth mentioning here that economy of Greece is already in a shambles due to which Pakistanis visiting Greece for better future get arrested by the local police of Greece after they failed to get a job and deported. As per law, after being arrested and deported, a deportee was not supposed to be arrested and sent to jail in Pakistan.
Majority of the deportees fall in the age group of 22 to 30. They pay huge amounts to the human traffickers and then put their lives at risk and entered Greece. As per previous reports of deportees, every deportee pays Rs0.5 to 0.7 million to human smuggler for his illegal entry in Greece.
An FIA officer said the human traffickers use illegal route of Iran via Balochistan and then from Iran to Turkey and Greece. They make their entry through trespassing or illegal border crossing where, at times, the border police of the concerned country opened fire on them and some of them lost their lives too.
Sometimes these deportees are kidnapped at the hands of their own Pakistani peoples after reaching Greece. As per reports, the Pakistanis already present in Greece and are jobless, have started abducting their own countrymen and demanded ransom from their families in Pakistan. These criminals trapped the new comers. They promised them of providing them with good jobs and after transporting to undisclosed location, they tortured them. They make telephone calls to their families in Pakistan and demanded ransom from them.
Despite all these miseries, youngsters are always ready to leave for Greece and other European countries.