This is why illegal immigrants are coming to Europe despite the epidemic
100,000 people have sought refuge in the European Union this year. The vast majority came to Europe illegally – despite the epidemic, people smugglers do flat work. Now internal EU documents show: People kidnappers are brave.
R.This year 100,000 people have already applied for asylum in the EU, the majority of whom have come to Europe illegally. Despite the corona crisis, organized human traffickers continue to operate at full speed. They are coming bold and daring. Sometimes even police officers from EU countries are part of corrupt networks – like Italy. At the very least it is available to the WELT as a result of the EU Commission’s confidential status reports.
How exactly do criminals progress? Read some of the latest human trafficking cases in Europe in February and March:
On February 26, Spanish police found 41 illegal immigrants in the port of Melilla. They were often hidden in waste glass containers to be shipped. Police found a large, sealed bag with the inscription “poisonous ash” in one of the containers. They opened the sack and found an immigrant in it. Police later searched the waste glass containers using special microphones that could detect search dogs and heartbeats.
Traffickers are increasingly offering their services on social networks. In late February, European police authority Europol discovered ads on Facebook in which the kidnappers made their way through Serbia to Romania and then to Austria. In particular, the offer includes overnight stays, mostly in Budapest, and on the Szeged-Budapest-Vienna route by escort and a kidnapper by foot and car. Booking is done via WhatsApp or IMO chat, which is a Swedish number contact.
A new trend: Considering the corona epidemic, it is very dangerous to drive in private cars with frequent checks. That’s why smugglers are increasingly switching to larger freight trucks, which can carry multiple immigrants and are less frequently tested. In mid-March, Romanian police stopped four trucks en route to Sweden, France and Austria and found 25 immigrants hidden in a cupboard behind metal profiles, plasterboard and pottery.
On February 24, authorities in Italy arrested 24 suspects. They are said to be part of a network of 90 Italians and Iraqis who smuggled Iraqi Kurds into Italy. Among them are five lawyers, two policemen from the immigration office in Croton, the Calabrian provincial capital, a policeman from the local police department in Croton and an employee from the city administration for processing asylum applications. Illegal residence and work permits have been issued in Iraq. Illegal immigrants flew to Italy on regular tourist visas, where they smuggled Italian police officers into the official asylum practice “for large sums and gifts”.
On March 20, Spanish police found a hijacker in Al Jazeera, who was carrying ten Moroccan immigrants aboard the Inbox. When he saw the human trafficker on the police patrol boat, he forced the migrants to jump into the water and swim ashore. All the people were arrested.
According to an EU document, a “catastrophic abduction case” took place in Slovenia in late February. Slovenian border police found a locker box 2.50 meters long and 80 centimeters high in a truck from Bosnia-Herzegovina and were taken away by two hijackers in a driving box. 13 Iraqi immigrants were trapped in it. “Immigrants were dehydrated and suffocated, some had already lost consciousness,” officials in charge in Serbia reported to Brussels.
On the way to the Czech Republic, a Turkish lorry was stopped at the Natlock border on February 26. In the grip, in addition to the load of unnamed items, were five Afghan immigrants, two adults and three minors. The driver knew nothing about the occupants of his truck. The kidnappers abducted five Afghans into a truck while they were parked in a parking lot and hid them behind cargo.
German authorities, along with Europol, discovered a network of hijackers on March 17, whose clients that day were 80 Syrians, Egyptians and Turks. The smugglers used small cargo trucks and brought immigrants from Turkey to Germany via Poland or the Czech Republic. Price: 3500 to 12,000 euros. According to the EU document, the mob’s ploy: “They used the scouts who went ahead as a preventive measure to identify police restrictions ahead of time.”
In early March, 272 migrants – most of them from Bangladesh, Eritrea, Algeria and Sudan – were rescued by Italian authorities. Once used, it is becoming increasingly popular, according to the European Union: smugglers stop immigrants from as many countries as possible in relatively new wooden boats, instructing about 120 on the other side of the oil field at “Barry Field”. Call the number of European rescue services provided to boats when they were tossed about a kilometer north of the Libyan coast.
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