Small islands on the Strait of Hormuz are where dreams of many Bangladeshi expatriates are brought to be killed.
When hard-working Bangladeshi migrants arrive in the UAE looking for jobs, they are steered by dreams of turning their own lives around, while they seize every opportunity before them to earn a little extra for their loved ones back home.
But that leaves them vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous opportunity seekers.
An Iran-based gang of human traffickers lure the Bangladeshi men with promises of better jobs in European countries – mostly in Turkey, Greece and Italy; but as soon as they are smuggled out of the United Arab Emirates, the workers are held captive in islands near the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas.
Hideouts on the islands – located in the 39km stretch of the Strait of Hormuz – are used to torture the Bangladeshi expatriates, while their families back home are contacted to demand ransom. Many of the hostages are unable to survive the torture, and die there at the hands of their captors.
The way these criminals operated was figured out by a three-member team of the Criminal Investigation Department of Bangladesh, who travelled to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Tehran last May to inquire a human trafficking case.
Speaking after a press conference in the CID headquarters yesterday, CID Special Superintendent Md Matiur Rahman said: “As soon as the migrants fall into their [traffickers] trap, they take away all the money from the innocent migrants in the name of legal job, visa fees, transportation and other charges.”
The Bangladeshi expatriates are smuggled out on speedboats from the UAE and taken to islands near Bandar Abbas, where they are locked up.
“The frauds torture the migrants brutally and use phones to transmit the sound of the victims’ screams to their family members for ransoms,” said the CID official, who coordinates the investigation against these human traffickers.
As a result of prolonged torture, some of the hostages do not make it out alive, said Matiur, who works under the CID’s Mymensingh zone.
“Bangladeshi members of such syndicates give the families specific numbers for Bkash [a mobile money transfer system] and tell them to transfer the ransom within a deadline. They threaten to kill the hostage if they do not get the money in time,” Matiur added.
Earlier, law enforcers were able to arrest a gang member in Bangladesh, confiscating ransom money and seizing 70 SIM cards linked with several Bkash accounts from his possession.
“The ransom amount is first deposited in Bkash, and then transferred to bank accounts in Iran and Tehran,” said Matiur.
The CID has already held meetings with the police and Interpol in Tehran regarding the human trafficking gang operating there.
“We have already identified eight to 10 such traffickers based in Bandar Abbas and Tehran. A list containing their names has been served to the law enforcers there, asking for their support in arresting the culprits,” the CID official said.
During 2013-14, with the help of the Iranian police, the Bangladesh CID was able to rescue over 97 victims from Iran.
According to CID figures, charge sheets were submitted in 14 cases against 160 members of human trafficking syndicates during the same period.
On Monday evening, the Criminal Investigation Department detained Nannu Miah, a Bangladesh-born human trafficker based in Iran, from the Dhaka airport following his extradition from Iran. CID officials claimed that Nannu was directly involved in kidnapping around 100 migrants and collecting ransoms from their families back in Bangladesh.