One-way trip from Athens to Lahore

It was not a usual flight by any sense of the term. More than half the seats on the Airbus A321 were taken by police officers. They were not armed and all wore yellow vests over their civilian clothes. They were accompanying 69 men. The officers had already removed the men's shoelaces and, as the plane took off, they also cut off the zip ties that bound their wrists together during their transfer to the airplane.

For security reasons, the flight attendants served neither regular meals (plastic cutlery was also forbidden) nor hot coffee, only cold sandwiches and soft drinks.

We left Athens and after a refueling and crew-change stop at Tbilisi, continued on to our final destination: Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore, Pakistan. For the 69 men, it was a one-way trip.

I covered this deportation flight as a journalist in May 2013. Among the Pakistani...