Staff Correspondent:

Two Bangladeshi men have returned home after enduring nine months of inhumane torture at the hands of human traffickers in Libya.

Motiur Rahman Sagar from Jhenaidah and Kushtia native Tanzir Sheikh arrived at Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 7:30am on Wednesday on a flight operated by Buraq Air.

In total, 162 Bangladeshi nationals returned from Libya alongside the duo.

The two men were lured in by local traffickers with promises of lucrative jobs abroad in 2023, international development NGO BRAC said in a statement. Their families paid Tk 400,000 each in hopes of securing a better future.

The duo were told they would get decent employment opportunities at good companies in Libya. But in reality, there were no jobs waiting for them.

Photo: Collected

Instead, the traffickers sold them to an infamous “mafia” network on the pretext of smuggling them into Italy.

Sagar and Tanzir, along with 80 other Bangladeshis, were locked in a dark room and subjected to relentless torture. They were beaten with iron rods and sticks, electrocuted, and abused daily in horrific ways.

When the captors believed they were on the verge of death, they abandoned the two men. But they survived and took refuge at a relative’s home in the Libyan capital Tripoli.

Following a request from their families and based on humanitarian grounds, the US State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and International Justice Mission responded with urgency.

Under their leadership and coordination, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) provided assistance in rescuing the two victims and sheltering them in a safe home.

After months of complex legal and logistical wranglings, the two men were finally able to return to Bangladesh on Wednesday.

BRAC said their return home is a testament to “cross-border cooperation, humanitarian leadership, and collective efforts” by families and the state.