Islamabad, Pakistan – When Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif removed Ahmed Ishaq Jahangir from his position as the chief of the country’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Wednesday, he became the highest-profile casualty in a sweeping organisational purge following the deaths of at least 43 Pakistanis off the coast of Morocco earlier in January.The drowning incident came to light on January 15, when Moroccan authorities rescued 36 people after their boat was stranded in the Mediterranean Sea for 13 days. At least 37 others, including several Pakistanis, remain missing.
Just four weeks before that, Greek authorities and merchant navy ships carried out four separate rescue missions near the Greek coast, saving at least 200 people, while close to 50 died, at least 40 of them Pakistanis.
These incidents have set off a rare crackdown by the Sharif-led government on officials who were tasked with stopping the human smuggling networks that lure Pakistanis from rural towns and villages with dreams of a life in Europe, and take them on dangerous, illegal migration routes that far too often end in death and tragedy in the waters of the Mediterranean. Advertisement
Before Jahangir’s removal, almost 50 FIA officials were dismissed for alleged negligence related to both the Greece and Morocco incidents. Additionally, the FIA said that more than 50 officials had been blacklisted from serving at any immigration checkpoints or anti-human trafficking units across the country, following a government inquiry, while several arrests were made targeting individuals who facilitated hu …
