A team of the Special Branch from Dhaka yesterday took charge of the immigration department of Shah Amanat International Airport in Chittagong, as part of a government initiative to hand over the stewardship of all immigration departments to SB from other branches of the police.

The Chittagong Metropolitan Police used to oversee this department, with a team of 65 personnel, said Assistant Commissioner Palash Kanti Nath of the team.

He told The Daily Star that the public administration department would gradually hand over charge of all immigration departments to SB.

Mohammad Shahriar Alam, superintendent of police of SB, who leads the new SB team of 40 at the airport, said, "We started our operations and are observing the situation. If necessary we

would bring more personnel."

Meanwhile, there were allegations that the police officials overseeing the airport's immigration department were involved in human trafficking through the airport.

Besides, there were frequent incidents of detention of illegal immigrants heading out to various countries, especially in the Middle East.

Even a day before, on Wednesday, the Rapid Action Battalion detained five persons at the airport who were trying to go to Iraq using fake documents, said a press release yesterday.

The five-Tuhin Islam, 26, Md Rasel Dali, 27, Mohammed Sohag, 32, Md Ripon , 23 of Munsiganj and Sajib Ahmed, 30 of Netrakona-had passed the immigration check point and were about to board an Air Arabia flight. They were supposed to pay middle-men Tk 4.4 lakh after reach-ing Iraq. Their route was Chittagong-Sarjah-Qatar-Iraq.

Rab-7 also identified four middlemen - Sabuj, 45, Sajib Ahmed, 25 of Munshiganj and Robiul, 32, and Md Jashim, 32 of Dhaka - who had supplied fake visas visas of Qatar and Iraq and asked the five to tear their Bangladeshi docuemnts after boarding the plane.

On October 12, Rab detained 39

illegal immigrants, headed for war-torn Libya. A batch of 130, including the 39, was ready to travel to Libya. Twenty-one of them had already boared the flight, and the remaining 70 were sent back by their middlemen from outside the airport, considering the situation.

Recently, a man filed a complaint with the airport authority against some immigration police officials of CMP for trafficking his son to Libiya on October3.