After months of captivity and inhuman torture, 12 Bangladeshi migrant workers are scheduled to return home from Iran today.
The returning workers are Aminul Haque, Forhad Hossain, Firoz Miah, Jashim Mia, Jakir Hossain, Mahfuzur Rahman, Montaz, Mehedi Hasan, Muslim Uddin, Shafiqul Alam, Shafiul Islam and Sajib Nath.
Rights Jessore, an NGO working for victims of trafficking, came to know about the captivity of these migrants last December, and took steps to bring them back home.
“We got information from Rights Jessore and the victims’ families and contacted the Iranian police to rescue the abducted migrants,” CID additional deputy inspector general Md Shah Alam told the Dhaka Tribune over the phone yesterday.
Alam also said a section of Bangladeshi traffickers last year lured the migrants of lucrative jobs in European countries, including Turkey and Greece, and thus traded them into Iran.
The ill-fated migrants were held hostage in Iran’s Bandar Abbas and Tehran while ransom was demanded from their relatives in Bangladesh, the CID official said, adding that all these victims had to pay ransom to their abductors.
Staying in the Middle Eastern countries, the traffickers had been carrying out their illegal activities with their local agents in Bangladesh for the last couple of years.
Following the return of 29 victims from Iran last December, the CID started to investigate incidents and arrested 14 local agents so far.
