Bangladeshi people read newspapers, pasted on a wall in an alley in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Oct. 20. (AP/A. M. Ahad)

When Mamun-ur-Rashid landed in Istanbul in an early May afternoon, he thought his dream of a better life in Europe was just steps away.

"My heart thudded for a minute there," he says.

But all his excitement soon dissipated when he was taken from the airport to a private confinement where he found more than 70 Bangladeshis. All of them were told that they would be sent to developed countries. Most of them had already spent weeks like this.

Mamun realized he was actually being trafficked and that too with an official passport of the Bangladesh government that people smugglers obtained using forged papers.

They all were at the mercy of an organized syndicate that uses Turkey as a new hub of human trafficking.

Such syndicates, according to some victims and government officials, have agents in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Turkey, Libya and some other countries. Exploiting the desperation of the low-income people, these traffickers smuggle them into different European, Latin American and Middle-Eastern countries.

Following massive crackdowns on human trafficking from Bangladesh through sea recently, they now first take the victims to neighboring India or Nepal through land routes and then fly them to Turkey. From there, they are sent to different destinations through illegal and often hazardous ways, officials said.

Born in a low-income family in Parbatipur of Dinajpur, Mamun was working as a salesman at a private company back home before a local manpower broker in mid-March lured him with promises of a concierge's job in Sicily, Italy, through legal channels.

The broker, Sazzadul Islam Musa of Dinjapur's Phulbari upazila, demanded Tk 7 lakh in exchange. Mamun agreed.

"I paid the money in installments. I had to sell a piece of land and take loans from others to arrange the money," he says. "Musa also took my hand-written private citizen passport, saying he needed it for visa processing."

The syndicate members in collusion with corrupt officials at the Agargaon passport office in Dhaka obtained an official passport in which Mamun was shown as a senior accounts officer of the National University. This was done without his knowledge, he claimed.

In the first week of April, Mamun along with Taufiqul Islam Jewel, another fortune-seeker from Dinajpur, came to Dhaka. Thus began their journey into a nightmare.

The traffickers had told them they would be boarding a plane to Italy in a few days. They were first kept at a flat in Mohammadpur for 20 days before being taken to a dingy hotel in Fakirapool.

Two days later, a man named Mahbub came to them with bus tickets and told him that they would take the land route to India first.

"Initially, I refused. But when I thought of the money I had already spent, I agreed," said Mamun.

They were taken to Kolkata and then to Mumbai from where they were flown to Istanbul towards the end of April.

All the way, they were guided by a trafficker named Al Amin who kept their passports and other documents with him.

Inside the confinement in Istanbul, Mamun spent weeks waiting for his plane ticket to Italy. Every time he asked someone from the syndicate about the ticket, he received the same answer: The journey was being delayed due to a problem in flight schedule.

Tired of waiting, the 32-year old at one stage insisted that he wanted to talk to his family. The traffickers allowed him to call the family, but it had to be in their presence so that Mamun could not reveal the truth.

"After about two weeks, somebody named Nazrul came and told me to start working at a nearby rod factory."

Mamun, a postgraduate, refused to work in Turkey. But many others, he said, had no alternatives.

Just when Mamun was on the verge of giving up all hopes, a syndicate member, to his surprise, returned him both the passports -- the original one and the official one obtained through fake documents. Jewel too got his passports back.

The two immediately went to the Bangladesh Embassy in Istanbul and told their stories to the officials, who seized their passports and sent them home with travel permits in mid-July.

Though Mamun and Jewel were saved from being trafficked, several hundred Bangladeshis, according to an investigation of the Department of Immigration and Passports (DIP), had already been smuggled to different countries, including Brazil, via Turkey with official passports.

Shahidul of Comilla is one of them. He was sent to Dubai in May, also using an official passport issued against forged papers, the DIP probe in July found.

Investigators said the syndicate that tried to traffic Mamun and Jewel had been active for years and had members, including some women, in 18 countries.

"The syndicate members work in small groups. They lure people, obtain fake passports and forge visas to traffic people," said Lt Col Khandaker Golam Sarwar, commanding officer of Rapid Action Battalion-3. His unit is probing several trafficking cases.

A large gang comprising passport officials and staffs, brokers and travel agents has so far had at least 2,000 official passports issued against fake documents, the DIP investigation revealed.

The syndicate usually takes Tk 7-10 lakh for each passport, according to a DIP official.

An official and three staffs of the passport office were suspended in May for forging official passports and assisting human traffickers.

Rab-3 officials recently said at least 43 women and seven men were trafficked to war-ravaged Syria in the past few months. The women were supposed to be sent to Lebanon as domestic workers. It is not clear whether they were sent on forged passports. (kes)

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