Staff Correspondent

More than 300 foreign citizens who have seen through their terms are still languishing in Bangladeshi jails because of bureaucratic hassles, the country's prisons chief said Tuesday.

As many as 950 foreigners have been detained in the jails, he added. Hustin Abdullah, a Hungarian, who had recently been freed, served two years in jail although the sentence against him was of only one month, a case in point.

Inspector general of prisons Brigadier General Md Zakir Hasan told bdnews24.com that jail terms of about 300 non-Bangladeshi prisoners have expired but they could not be freed without the home ministry's permission. He blamed bureaucratic tangle for the delay in letting go of them.

"The Home ministry is informed once a foreign national jailed. We inform the ministry before the jail term of the inmate expires. The home ministry then informs the foreign ministry, which in turn sends letter to the related country through its embassy," he explained.

"But the process takes a lot of time causing sufferings to the prisoners with their jail terms having expired," he added. Golam Haider, superintendent of Dhaka Central Jail, told bdnews24.com that majority of the foreign prisoners were Indian and that some of them had been convicted of smuggling.

A senior official at the home ministry said 302 foreign nationals, 10 of them women, were waiting in the jails to return home. Related countries were contacted over their release, said a home ministry official, preferring anonymity.

The official alleged that the countries the prisoners came from did not respond positively to take them back, which delayed the process.

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