Bodies of 4 Pakistanis who died on a migrant boat journey off West Africa return home for burial

SHEIKHUPURA, Pakistan (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 Thursday. The bodies were later buried in their hometowns in Punjab province.

The boat had set off from Mauritania on Jan. 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 has already repatriated all the 22 Pakistani survivors.

The brother of one of the migrants who died told The Associated Press that human smugglers had tortured and thrown the migrants, including his brother, into the sea over a payment dispute.

Mohammad Adnan said his family had agreed to paid 5 million rupees ($18,000) to a local human smuggler for sending his brother, Mohammad Arslan, to Europe and 4 million rupees ($14,000) 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. He said his brother Qaiser Iqbal in his last message had only said that he was boarding a boat and later he lost contact with him.

He made his comments before receiving the body of his brother at the airport. Recently, some of the survivors have also said their boat never capsized and African human smugglers had tortured migrants with hammers and threw them into the sea in a payment dispute.

No government official was immediately available to comment on the claims.

Hundreds of Pakistanis die every year while trying to reach Europe by land and sea with the help of human smugglers.

After the sinking, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Jan. 18 stressed the need for strict measures to curb human trafficking. Pakistan says it is cracking down on human traffickers and sacked several immigration officials for negligence.

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Associated Press writers Babar Dogar and Asim Tanveer contributed to this story from Lahore, Pakistan and Multan, Pakistan.