Three Rohingya men caught with Bangladeshi passports were trying to travel to Turkey

The three Rohingya refugees arrested with Bangladeshi passports on them were trying to travel to Turkey with support of people of the Myanmar ethnic minority in Europe, according to police.

They obtained the Bangladeshi passports from Noakhali with the help of brokers, police have learnt after interrogating the trio after detaining them on Thursday night.

Police arrested Md Yusuf, 23, his younger brother Md Musa, 20, and Md Aziz alias Ayaiz, 21, on the Dhaka-Chattogram Highway.

They have been living in Hakimpara Rohingya Camp in Ukhia's Khaiyangkhali since fleeing a violent military-led crackdown following decades of persecution in their homeland Myanmar in 2017, Akbarshah Police Station chief Mostafizur Rahman Chowdhury said.

Police pleaded for a five-day remand to quiz them in a forgery case after producing them before court on Friday.

During initial interrogation, the three young Rohingya men told police that they planned to go to Europe after contacting an organisation called ‘European Rohingya Council’ on WhatsApp.

The organisation instructed them to submit their papers to the Turkish embassy in Dhaka.

They approached a broker named Nurul Alam alias Ershad at the Rohingya camp in Teknaf. Ershad introduced them to another broker named Chokoria Parvej, police said.

Pervej took the three men to Feni last month. There they were lodged in a hotel and then taken to Noakhali regional passport office.

“During the interrogation, they said that no one at the Noakhali passport office asked them any questions. They gave their fingerprints directly there. Later they got the passports from Parvej,” OC Mostafizur Rahman said.

On reviewing the seized passports, police found that the passports of Yusuf and Musa were issued on Dec 24, 2018.

They mentioned Ali Ahmed as their father and Nozorpur under Senbag’s Ward No 7 in Noakhali as permanent address.

Aziz’s passport was issued on Jan 22, 2019. His father's name mentioned in the passport is Jameer Hossain and home address Nozorpur under the Ward No 2 of Senbag.

They also provided mobile phone numbers for emergency contact and nationality certificate numbers.

The brokers received Tk 150,000 and Tk 90,000 for the passports of Yusuf and Musa. Aziz paid Tk 60,000 for his passport. Ershad took the money from them, according to police.

All three of them can speak 'good English', the OC said.

The two brothers told police their father was the headmaster of a school in Myanmar.

They claimed that the names of the parents given in the passport are correct.

“We are investigating the matter,” OC Mostafizur said.

Police recovered mobile phones and SIM cards from them. "We’ve been trying to find out how they got these," the police officer said.