Hameed Iqbal Bhatti had prospered over two decades working in Saudi Arabia, but after returning to Pakistan three years ago, he was getting desperate.
The economy had suffered in the pandemic and his restaurant business closed. With work avenues drying up and sky-high inflation blowing a hole in his budget, the 47-year-old cobbled together $7,600 for a trafficker to smuggle him into Europe, where he hoped to rebuild the life he once had, his brother Muhammad Sarwar Bhatti, 53, said.
"He told me that he would start afresh for his children's future and the life he wanted for them," the elder Bhatti said at the family home in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.