Staff Reporter :Helal Uddin, a Bangladesh labourer, who was kidnapped by IS militants in Libya on March 6, talked with his family in Jamalpur over phone on Tuesday. The duration of call was four minutes only. But the man could not say anything about the identity of his captors or the name of the place where he had been kept, nor could he say how the militants kidnapped them. “I think that the kidnappers may release me within two or three days,” the migrant worker told his family over mobile phone in a choked voice, our Jamalpur Correspondent said. When asked what they gave him to eat, Helal Uddin said: It was light food. It was served only one time a day. He also said that the kidnappers did not torture on them. Helal said that he and two other people are confined in an unknown room. Eighteen days into the incident, the kidnappers allowed Helal Uddin to call his wife Aleya Khatun from one of their mobile phones.Hearing his voice after so many days, all the family members burst into tears. When Helema asked her father when they were going to release him, the man said that he heard his captors talking about his release in “two or three days”.The conversation ended at this point as the captors seemingly hung up the phone. The phone call at around 10:30am came as pleasant surprise to not only to the Helal’s family, but also to all the people of Dakkhin Gazaria village of Madarganj Upazila in Jamalpur district. Unknown militants abducted Helal Uddin and Anowar Hossain, 38, along with four Filipinos, an Austrian, a Czech and a Ghana national from the Al-Ghani oil field, south of city of Sirte. Anowar is from Goyeshpur village in Noakhali. Bangladesh foreign ministry in a press statement on March 9 said that terrible militants of Islamic State had abducted them.But State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam on Monday told journalists that no militant group in Libya claimed responsibility for the abduction of the two Bangladeshis.Bangladesh embassy officials in Tripoli said they were in touch with embassies of the Philippines and Austria and also with the Libyan authorities for their rescue.Families of the two are passing their days in fear and total uncertainty. Rubel, 13, one of the two sons of Helal Uddin, said he has not been going to school since his father’s abduction. “Everybody is crying. How can I go to school?” said Rubel, a student of class IX at Adarvita High School. Aleya Khatun, wife of Helal, said her carpenter husband last came to Bangladesh 10 months ago. Earlier, he had gone to Dubai in 2008, but returned home only after six months. Then in 2009, he went to Libya to seek his fortunes.He spent Tk 10 lakh to manage the job. For this, he sold his land and borrowed from relatives. Meanwhile, Anowar Hossain was a diploma electrical engineer. He went to Libya in 2010 for the first time and then again in 2012, according to our Noakhali correspondent.
