Bangladesh joins hands with Interpol to crack down on traffickers
BANGLADESH shared details of suspected human traffickers with Interpol for the first time, a police official said last Tuesday (10), as the country seeks to stop the kidnap and killing of migrants.
Minto Mia became the first Bangladeshi trafficker to feature on the international police agency’s Red Notice list of wanted fugitives last week, described as deceiving jobseekers and “wrongfully confining and killing” people over ransom demands.
He is the first of six traffickers that Bangladesh has asked Interpol to add to its list of some 7,000 people globally that member states’ law enforcement agencies want to locate and arrest, said Syeda Zannat Ara, Special Superintendent of Police.
“These are traffickers who trick people from Bangladesh by taking money from them with promises of jobs abroad. They then keep them hostage in Libya and torture them for more money,” she said.
“Putting their details on the Interpol will restrict their movement as they will be wanted no matter which country they go to.”
More than 70 Bangladeshis are on Interpol’s Red Notice list, which seeks the provisional arrest of such fugitives, for prosecution or to serve a sentence, on charges that include murder, use of counterfeit money as well as distribution of pornography.
Bangladesh is vulnerable to trafficking as it is one of the world’s largest exporters of manpower, with about 700,000 workers going overseas to jobs every year. It relies heavily on the remittances they send home.
The country’s migrants pay some of the highest recruitment fees in the world because the system depends mainly on unlicensed brokers in rural areas, which campaigners say leads to exploitation and trafficking.