Dhaka airport to introduce APIS preventing aerial movement of int'l offenders

Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (HSIA), the main facilitator of movement of aircrafts in the country, is set to introduce a system to easily and early identify offenders.

The move is aimed at stopping possibility of aerial movement of the criminals to and from Bangladesh.

Having installed, the device will let the authorities to keep abreast of arrival and departure of members of international criminal outfits beforehand.

Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) is going to induct Advance Passenger Information System (APIS), an electronic data interchange system established by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

According to sources, 40 lakh plus passengers enter Bangladesh through HSIA yearly creating a difficult situation for the authorities to detect human traffickers, drug peddlers, smugglers and other criminals filtering the sea of people.

API System pregnant with a database of the international offenders will scan names and particulars of the passengers of inbound and outbound flights. Any distortion of names and identities will not evade notice. In case of doubt, immigration authorities will be informed of. The ticketing outlets will collect all relevant information of the passengers and put it into its database. The APIS will automatically evaluate the information of the passengers before sending it to the immigration authorities.

Immigration police, NBR, passport department, National Telecommunication Monitoring Centre, Bangladesh Tourism Board, NSI and other intelligence agencies will be able to use the APIS.

An officials quoting anonymity said the international offenders have appeared as threats to every country putting security officials in great challenge. The APIS will be very effective in resolving the problem.