Bangladesh arrests alleged international human traffic chief
DHAKA: A Bangladeshi who allegedly heads an international human trafficking gang was arrested Monday, police said, a er the retaliatory killing of 30 migrants following the murder of a smuggler in Libya.
About 26 Bangladeshis and four Africans were killed in the North African nation by family members of the 30year-old Libyan smuggler a er ‘clandestine migrants’ murdered him for unknown reasons, the country’s UN-recognised government said last week.
Kamal Uddin, 55, was detained in the capital Dhaka by police on Monday, and authorities accused him of being the ‘mastermind’ behind the trafficking syndicate.
“He has admi ed he has connection with the international traffickers’ racket involved in the recent incident,” police spokesman Sujoy Kumar Roy told AFP.
Police alleged Uddin’s gang targeted Bangladeshi villagers.
“Kamal Uddin has smuggled over 400 Bangladeshis in the last 10-12 years,” they added in a statement.
Bangladesh has urged Libya’s UN-backed government to probe the killings, punish the perpetrators and compensate the victims.The incident highlighted the trafficking of youth from the impoverished South Asian nation to Libya.
Tens of thousands of young Bangladeshi men have a empted the perilous Mediterranean crossing in recent years, and the number of traffickers catering to them has mushroomed.
“At least 700 Bangladeshis have been detained by the Libyan coastguard during this pandemic, which gives a hint at the actual number of Bangladeshis a empting these perilous journeys,” the head of a local migration think tank, Tasneem Siddiqui, told AFP.
When AFP visited the rural town of Beanibazar in 2016, a local councillor said thousands of young men paid up to US$12,000 to traffickers for safe passage to Italy. But many were later found to have been sold as slaves in Libya, he said. — AFP