Dhaka to start verification of 'Bangladeshis'on Oct 28
Dhaka will start verifying nationalities of the 118 trafficking victims, who claimed to be Bangladeshis after being arrested in Thailand, from October 28.
"We will verify their claims [thoroughly] and in the first group, we will have 30 of them,” Secretary (bilateral) Mustafa Kamal said at the foreign minister's press briefing yesterday. Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali was briefing journalists at his office on the forthcoming visits of the president and prime minister to the United Arab Emirates.
The 118 self-claimed Bangladeshis are now staying in five or six detention centres in Thailand and the Thai authorities, in the first phase, would give us consular access only to the 30 of them, said Kamal.
The foreign minister on October 19 said Bangladesh had sought consular access to verify nationalities of the 118 “victims of human trafficking”.
According to media reports, Thai police rescued the victims recently after they had been confined in a Southern Thailand rubber plantation deep in the jungle for days.
Traffickers had lured them with well-paid jobs either in Thailand or Malaysia and picked them up from the coast of Cox's Bazar sometime in late September.
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