The ‘deadly’ passage to Europe

At least 280 Bangladeshi nationals are in Libyan jail as illegal immigrants who arrived there via Sudan, Egypt, Aljeria, Dubai and Jordan across the Mediterrenean from April to July, says a letter sent to Bangladesh foreign ministry by Sheikh Sekandar Ali, the embassador to Libya on 6 August.

Manpower recruitment agents in Bangladesh say, illegal agents charge almost Tk 800,000 to one million to send a man to Europe via Libya. As soon as the man reaches Libya, the agents in Bangladesh forcefully extract the full payment from the family.

The agents then hold the person hostage in Libya and try to extract more money as ransom.

Notably, none of the 280 men arrested in Libya have Libyan visas as the Bangladesh government has stopped sending manpower to Libya since 2015.

Libya has become a ‘safe route’ for the human traffickers over past few years, according to manpower exporters.

Most of the migrants seek to enter Italy, Greece and Spain with the help of these traffickers using the passage through Mediterrenean.

One such man, now in Libyan jail, is Ashraful Ambia from Jakiganj in Sylhet of Bangladesh. His brother told Prothom Alo that, agents took Tk 800,000 initially and claimed another Tk300, 000 after one month he reached Libya.

“Ashraful called us from Libya and said if we did not pay the amount, they would kill him,” he added.

Ashraful’s brother said that as many as 46 youths from Jakiganj were in Libyan jail.

Ashraful’s brother Akhlaq named a certain Shahin Ahmed who allegedly, along with some other agents from Jakiganj, has been cheating people with false promises of sending them to Europe.

Among the others arrested, there are migrants from Madaripur, Shariatpur, Faridpur, Noakhali, Kishoreganj and Brahmanbaria. Some of them are either missing or jailed in Libya.

“We sent the names of the jailed Bangladshis to the special branch of police for verifications. The agents will be arrested very soon,” said the home minister Asaduzzaman Khan.

Bangladesh embassy in Libya investigated the matter and found that around 146 Bangladeshis were arrested by the Libyan coastguard on 17 and 23 June and handed over to the country’s migration agency.

Other migrants went missing after a boat carrying capsized on 19 June.

The traffickers use the Dhaka-Abudhabi- sharjah- Alexandria-Benghazi air route and then take the Benghazi-Tripoli-Jowara route till the Meditarrenean coast.

Illegal immigrants thus reach various European countries, crossing the Meditarrenean.

According to Eurostat, a statistics organisation of European Union, around 100,000 Bangladeshis are living illegally in various countries across Europe.

A quarter of the total illegal immigrants using the passage through the Meditarrenean to Europe are Bangladehsis, according to the latest report of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.

*This report, originally published in the Prothom Alo print edition, has been rewritten in English by Farjana Liakat.