News / Pakistan

Pakistan sends 30 deportees back to Europe

Thursday, 03 December 2015 6:27 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 03 December 2015 6:28 PM ]

This handout photograph released by Pakistan's Interior Ministry on December 3, 2015, shows a Greek charter plane carrying migrants arriving at Benazir Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad. (AFP)

Pakistani authorities have sent at least 30 "unverified deportees" back to Europe after refusing to allow them to disembark from a chartered plane at an airport in Islamabad.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said in a statement on Thursday that the deportees could not be repatriated as their identities had not been confirmed.

Khan said Thursday's flight from Greece had failed to adhere to the terms of an existing agreement between the European Union (EU) and Pakistan.

"Thirty unverified deportees arrived at Islamabad from Greece via a chartered plane. On the instructions of the interior minister, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) stopped these illegally sent people including the crew of the plane to disembark," the minister said.

“Any deportee with the unverified documents will be sent back on the same flight to the country he would arrive [from]. A European country has violated the Pakistani laws even after all matters were settled down with the commissioner of the European Union, it will not be allowed," he added.

Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan addresses a press briefing in Islamabad on March 24, 2015. (AFP photo)

Meanwhile, Sarfraz Hussain, a spokesman for the Pakistani Interior Ministry, also described the refugees as “unverified deportees,” mostly from Greece.

The remarks come after a Pakistan-bound plane from Greece landed at the Benazir Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad around midday.

However, Pakistani officials refused to allow 30 of the 49 passengers to disembark, saying Europe had failed to provide adequate proof that they were Pakistani.

The plane was sent back to Athens around three hours later after 19 of the deportees were allowed to enter the country.

In early November, the Islamabad government announced that it had suspended a 2010 agreement on the readmission of illegal immigrants with the EU countries, except Britain.

Senior Pakistani authorities have accused the European countries of misusing the agreement.

According to the Pakistani Interior Ministry, at least 90,000 people were sent back to Pakistan from various countries last year alone.

According to figures from the European statistical institute Eurostat, Pakistan is one of the top five countries of origin for illegal migration to Europe.

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