Zulfi to receive Pak prisoners arriving home from Malaysia tomorrow

ISLAMABAD, May 28 (APP):Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development Sayed Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari will receive 315 Pakistani prisoners released by the Malaysian government on completion of their jail terms in this month.

The freed prisoners will be landing at Islamabad International Airport (IIA) on Wednesday night and to be given a warm welcome on behalf of the government, Zulfikar Bukhari told APP here on Tuesday.

He said the government had provided them legal and financial assistance for their repatriation, regretting that the detainees were stranded earlier in Malaysia as they were not in a position to afford their returning expenses.

Zulfikar said they would be able to celebrate Eid-ul-Fiter with their families due to timely action of Prime Minister Imran khan who ordered the release of 40 million and 10 million fund from Bait-ul-Mal and Foreign Office, respectively.

According to Civil Aviation Authority, the prisoners would be airlifted through PIA special flight PK 9894/9895. The PIA’s Boeing 777 aircraft would depart from 02:35 am on May 29 and would return on same day at 09:30 pm at Islamabad.

Due to air space closure between India-Pakistan, the direct flights to Kualalampur were suspended that was why the Boeing 777 of PIA would be taking other route, the statement added.

The official sources in overseas ministry said the Community Welfare Attache of Pakistan in Malaysia was assigned the task to gather the freed Pakistanis at the airport in time.

The families of freed prisoners had already informed by the Overseas Pakistanis Foundation (OPF) about their return.

Moreover, the Malaysian Immigration Department had also confirmed the repatriation of Pakistani prisoners to the foreign media, yesterday.