European police say they have arrested eight "ringleaders" of a human-trafficking group and dismantled a large-scale secret network linking about 10,000 Afghan, Pakistani and Syrian migrants to the continent. Accused of delivering.
The European Union's police agency, Europol, said in a statement that the German-led task force, which included Austria, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and the Netherlands, had also arrested 126 of its colleagues. What's more, most of the arrests took place in Austria.
Europol, which co-operated in the operation launched in August last year, has described "migrant traffickers" as "extremely dangerous".
The agency, based in The Hague in the Netherlands, said in a statement: "Europol's biggest targets are mostly Syrians who have international connections to their destination countries.
He added that the investigation had revealed that the suspects facilitated the smuggling of at least 10,000 refugees to European countries, most of whom were citizens of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria.
He said that 916 cases of smuggling were detected in the operation last year, during which about 151 houses were searched and assets worth one million euros were confiscated.
Europol says smugglers transported refugees from Turkey's western Balkans, Romania and Hungary to Austria, Germany and the Netherlands, using lorries, sealed vehicles and private cars.
He said the defendants used to charge between 4,000 euros (43 43,000) and 10,000 euros to transport migrants to European borders in extremely unfavorable and dangerous conditions.
German federal police say they are still searching for the six suspects, who used social media to convince relatives of the refugees that their services were safe and to use short videos to secure their services. Showed safe.
The suspects were receiving money through hawala, an illegal money laundering system, German federal police said, adding that they were looking for six more suspects.
