Amraiz Khan Lahore
After the increasing cases against FIA officials of being involved in facilitation of human smugglers, Ministry Interior has decided to get clearance of such officials from Intelligence Bureau prior before their posting at airports or immigration checkposts, documents available with daily “Pakistan Observer” revealed on Sunday.
It merits mentioning here that several cases in recent past were registered against FIA officials on the charges of being involved in facilitating human smugglers and youngsters travelling abroad illegally. Interestingly within about six months two cases were registered against 18 FIA personnel posted at Sialkot airport only. In latest case the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had booked 10 of its officials for allegedly facilitating 41 Afghan nationals to travel to Saudi Arabia using forged Pakistani passports. Those booked included Sub-Inspectors Asad Zameer, Suleman Liaquat Virk and Imran Shaukat Virk; ASI Saqib Ameer; and Head Constables Muhammad Shahzad, Shahzada Latif, Fayaz Ahmad, Muhammad Idrees, Muhammad Nawaz and Haider.
In Pakistan, human traffickers usually use a land route to transport illegal immigrants to ‘greener pastures’ but in these case air route was exploited from Sialkot airport to send these illegal immigrants to different destinations on fake travel documents.
In another incident of such nature FIA booked its eight officials on the charges of being connived with human smugglers. Among these officials were sub-inspectors Sulyman Liaqat and lmran Shoukat, ASI Sajjad Ahmed, traffic assistants Asif Masood and Osma Aslam, and Constables Nadeem Mustafa, Danish Ali and Faisal Nazir posted at Sialkot International Airport. A senior FIA officer told Pakistan Observer that cases of such officials have been sent to Counter Terrorism Wing for further action.
Apart from these two incidents several cases surfaced from Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore and Faisalabad airports as well wherein dozens of FIA officials were involved in abetting human smugglers.
Now Director General FIA has issued instructions to get security clearance from IB with requisite filled form S-190. The notification says that this clearance will also be mandatory for posting in Anti Human Trafficking Circle also.
When this scribe contacted spokesman for FIA, he said no doubt notification is there but officially he did not receive. He said process of clearance is yet to decided whether it would be before posting or otherwise.
