With the execution of the mastermind, a case being filed by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), and several suspects getting arrested — there have been visible developments over the gruesome murder of 26 Bangladeshis and four African migrants in Libya eight days ago.
But the question of how these Bangladeshis were trafficked to the North African country still remains murky.
CID so far has arrested seven individuals for their suspected involvement in the trafficking of these men.
These suspects are being interrogated to learn further how the 26 Bangladeshis, who were killed in the attack, were trafficked to Libya while Italy being the last stop.
According to sources, the deceased Bangladeshis went there in between January 2019 and March this year and they were working at different organizations.
Seeking anonymity, an official at the organized crime unit of CID, said: “They [the Bangladeshis] might have been sent to Delhi through the Dhaka airport. Or they first went to Calcutta and then to Delhi through the Benapole land port.
“Then they were sent to Libya via Dubai, Egypt, Jordan or Algeria. Besides, only a few of them were supposed to be sent to Italy.”
“These migrants were working at different jobs there, but a few didn’t, as they were getting ready for ‘game’ which is like a code name in the trafficking process. A ‘game’ happens only when there are a large number of people to be trafficked. All the migrants living in Libya are usually subjected to this.
“There are three teams operating in this whole syndicate. A team lures people for trafficking and collects money in Bangladesh. The other two teams are in Libya. One team, consisting of Bangladeshis, lures fellow migrants in the name of better jobs and life opportunities in Italy or other European countries and the third team are local Libyans who run the show,” he added.
“The 26 Bangladeshis and four African migrants were made hostage by the Libyan human traffickers for extra money [for both local and Bangladeshi traffickers] and this is a common thing to occur in such situations.”
The CID official also said that the human traffickers record and share videos of the migrants getting tortured for huge ransoms.
Rapid Action Battalion presents the arrestees before the media in Muksudpur upazila of Gopalganj on Thursday, June 4, 2020 | Dhaka Tribune “They also keep some of their own as inside men in the midst of the kidnapped and tortured group so that none can escape or revolt. The deceased Bangladeshis and Africans were supposed to be trafficked to Italy through the Mediterranean but were sent through the desert due to unknown reasons.
“One of the African hostages somehow killed a member of the Libyan human trafficking group. This resulted in the murder of 26 Bangladeshis and few other Africans as an act of vengeance,” he added.
Up to 80 Bangladeshis involved in the trafficking syndicate
Talking to Dhaka Tribune, one of the CID officers investigating this incident here, while seeking anonymity, said that around 75 to 80 people are involved in this human trafficking syndicate because of whom 26 Bangladeshis are now dead.
“We are suspecting the involvement of two manpower recruiting agencies in this incident. I can’t reveal the names of these organizations due to ongoing investigations, but one is in Dhaka’s Chamelibagh area and the other is in Moghbazar,” he said.
Three of those arrested by us are, Sheikh Mahbubur Rahman, chairman of a recruiting agency, his brother Sheikh Shahidur Rahman, managing director of that agency, and Bahalul Alam, the official disclosed.
“All those who are involved in this incident are somehow connected with these two manpower recruiting agencies,” he added.
“Besides, during drives, we seized around 300 passports from the offices of the two agencies. We believe that these people were supposed to be trafficked soon. A total of 16 bank cheques and few computers have also been seized.
“We might get more information on how everything happened and how things operate, by analyzing the drives of those computers,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) on Thursday detained two suspects from Gopalganj.
Earlier on Tuesday night, CID filed a case accusing 38 named and eight to 10 unnamed individuals with Paltan police station over the trafficking and murder of the 26 Bangladeshi migrants in Libya.
The same day, the Libyan warlord Khaled Al-Mishai, who is said to be responsible for the killing those Bangladeshis and 4 African migrants in the town of Mizdah, was reportedly killed in a drone strike by Libyan government forces.
In a tweet, a Libyan English daily, The Libya Observer said Khaled Al-Mishai was killed in a drone strike by Libyan air force south of Gharyan on Tuesday.
