Members of the Rapid Action Battalion arrested the suspected ringleader of a Libya-based human trafficking gang at Raninagar upazila in Naogaon Thursday night.
The arrestee is Jahid Hossain, 27, son of Ehram Sardar of Singara Para village under the upazila.
At a press conference on Friday, RAB-5 commander Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad Masud Parvez said that the gang members led by Jahid were luring people into going Italy by offering high salaries and better life there for Tk聽20 lakh each, but Jahid was actually trafficking them to Libya.
鈥業n Libya, the trafficked Bangladeshis were held captive and tortured inhumanly for extorting money from them,鈥� he said.
The RAB commander said that after one of the victims had filed a case with the Kurigram Sadar police station and had contacted them, they arrested Jahid from his house at about 8:00pm on Thursday.
The victim, Yakub Ali, who was also present at the press conference, told 抖阴精品 that Jahid told him that he would take him to Italy for Tk 20 lakh and would give him a good job at one of his business establishments there with a better salary.
After he had given Tk聽5 lakh as advance, Jahid first took him and 26 other Bangladeshis to Dubai of the United Arab Emirates and then to Niger via flights.
鈥極n their way to Algeria from Niger by road, Algerian police arrested them and they were imprisoned for 21 days,鈥� he said, adding that after they were released from the jail, Jahid took them to Tunisia, and from there to Libya.
Yakub claimed that there they were held captive in a room and were tortured inhumanly.
鈥楢long with Bangladeshis, African and Pakistani people tortured us, captured videos on the torture and sent those to our family members in Bangladesh with the aim of extortion,鈥� he said.
Yakub said that taking loans, his family members sent Tk聽35 lakh to Jahid and his accomplices through banks and mobile banking system.
鈥榃hen the gang realised that my family could no longer send them any money, they made me arrested by Libyan police,鈥� he claimed.
With no other options left, Yakub鈥檚 relatives then contacted a retired major general who was a friend of the then Bangladeshi ambassador to Libya at the time. The ambassador later located Yakub and sent him to Bangladesh on January 9.
Yakub said that after he returned home, he filed a case against 10 people, including Jahid and his father, with the Kurigram Sadar police station on March 3.
鈥楢 group of people who were trafficked like me caught Jahid and handed him to the Raninagar police station. But Jahid got released on the same day,鈥� he said, adding that he then contacted the RAB-5 who arrested Jahid from his home Thursday night.
Earlier on April 11, 167 undocumented Bangladeshi migrants were repatriated from Libya with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Embassy of Bangladesh in Tripoli and the International Organisation for Migration.
Among the returnees, 16 individuals voluntarily returned from Benghazi and surrounding areas, while 151 others were released from the Ganfuda Detention Centre, according to a press release issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.