SHEIKHUPURA (AP) – The bodies of four Pakistanis who were among dozens who drowned in the capsizing of a migrant boat off West Africa last month have been repatriated.
The four were among 13 Pakistan citizens identified through DNA tests.
Their remains were brought home from Morocco overnight by a Saudi flight that landed at the Islamabad International Airport, officials said yesterday. The bodies were later buried in their hometowns in Punjab province.
The boat had set off from Mauritania on January 2 with 80 passengers, including several from Pakistan, according to the Foreign Ministry and a Spain-based migrant rights group, Walking Borders.
The ministry said the boat capsized near the Moroccan port of Dakhla en route to the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off northwest Africa where a large numbers of migrants head on a dangerous Atlantic crossing in ramshackle boats.
Walking Borders had said 50 people on the boat died on their way to the Canary Islands and 44 of them were Pakistanis. Pakistan already repatriated all the 22 Pakistani survivors.
The brother of one of the migrants who died told The Associated Press that human smugglers tortured and thrown the migrants, including his brother, into the sea over a payment dispute.
Mohammad Adnan said his family had agreed to paid PKR5 million (USD18,000) to a local human smuggler for sending his brother, Mohammad Arslan, to Europe and PKR4 million (USD14,000) were paid in advance.
The rest was yet to be paid when they heard news about the capsizing, and later some of the survivors said the migrants were thrown into the sea.
Another man, Samar Iqbal, whose brother also died, said he did not know that human smugglers threw migrants into the sea.
