The Rapid Action Battalion yesterday arrested the owners of two recruiting agencies suspected of trafficking people to the Middle East and holding them hostage overseas for ransom.
The arrested suspects, identified as Abdul Zabbar Khan, 47, owner of “Samira Tours and Travels”, and SMA Mannan, 37, owner of “Zaber International”, were picked up from the capital’s Mohammadpur and Paltan areas respectively, RAB 2 officials told a press briefing at their Agargaon office yesterday evening.
The men are suspected to be members of a human trafficking gang, sending people abroad, mostly to Middle Eastern countries, with false jobs and forged visas and passports.
They are also accused of “selling” people as slaves in countries like Iraq, or keeping them hostage by seizing their passports and then collecting ransom money from their families in Bangladesh.
The RAB officials said more than 300 people had fallen victims to their cheating and other inhuman activities.
“Due to the gang’s cheating and forgeries, a few hundred innocent Bangladeshis were arrested abroad and experienced untold sufferings in detention in foreign countries,” Additional Superintendent of Police Raihan Uddin Khan, operation officer of RAB 2, said.
The officer said the suspected gang members used to send people abroad through their recruiting agencies with fake visas and passports. They were also involved in sending women to Iraq and selling them as the slaves there, he added.
“Zabbar Khan was arrested in Iraq in 2011 for cheating and forgery. He had gone to Iraq several times using three separate passports,” Raihan Uddin said, adding that Zabbar was blacklisted by the Iraqi authorities for his illegal activities.
“This gang sent 300 people to Iraq against visas for only 100 people in 2009. Fifty of the victims were arrested and sent back home when it was proven that they had fake visas, while 50 others had to suffer in jails there,” Raihan said.
Abdul Zabbar, from Faridpur district, lives in Shyamoli, while Mannan, of Kosba upazila in Brahmanbaria, resides at Naya Paltan in the city.
Meanwhile, earlier yesterday, Mohammad Barakat Ali, manager of “Samira Tours”, had claimed that Mannan was picked up in a white microbus outside his Motijheel office on Monday night by some people who identified themselves as RAB personnel.
