Pak unearths major scam of setting free drug dealers

Pakistan government has said that corrupt officials facilitated several drug dealers by issuing them fake nationality documents to bring them to the country from foreign jails under prisoners exchange agreements.
Interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan expressed concern over the scam that was brought to light by a committee formed to probe similar cases of prisoners in the UK.
More than 40 drug traffickers and peddlers, including foreigners, were illegally brought to Pakistan from Sri Lanka and Thailand over the years, Khan told reporters yesterday.
Pakistan has an agreement on exchange of offenders with several countries and Pakistani nationals complete a part of their sentence in the country where they are convicted and then brought to Pakistan to complete their remaining terms.

Not only the Pakistan nationals transferred under the agreements were allowed to walk free from jails but in some cases, criminals from other nations were also shifted on fake documents and then allowed to go to other countries.
Khan said that among the drug barons brought to Pakistan was notorious drug lord from Myanmar, Ibrahim Koko, who was issued a Pakistani passport by the embassy in Thailand on the basis of a fake domicile purportedly issued from Khushab district in Punjab, according to report published by the Dawn today.

The minister, who presided over a meeting on exchange of offenders, said that the drug lord was at present in the custody of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

Khan asked the officials scared of drug lords to quit and warned that all those involved in corruption would be put behind bars.
He said an inquiry by the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) revealed that Koko was born in Rangoon in Myanmar on November 14, 1972, and at the age of 17, he had been brought by his uncle to Singapore on fake documents.
Koko was arrested in 1993 on fake identity and later deported to Myanmar. He later moved to Thailand where he was convicted of drug-related charges.
He was recently brought to Pakistan following a fraudulent exercise to prove him a Pakistani national, but was caught by the FIA.

Khan said one of the drug dealers had undertaken 19 foreign visits after coming to Pakistan, while others went abroad for more than once.
"Only three of them were in jail and most of them were abroad," he said.
The minister regretted that none of the officials had sought their placement on the exit control list.
Pakistan has already suspended such an agreement with Britain after reports that some prisoners serving life terms were brought back and released within months.