German Police Dismantle International Human Trafficking Ring

German federal police conducted a large-scale operation and arrested 19 members of an international human trafficking gang in several states. The detainees have been accused of illegally bringing large numbers of migrants into Germany since at least April 2019.

On the morning of Tuesday, January 19, approximately 400 federal police officers in the states of Berlin, Hesse, Lower Saxony, and North Rhine-Westphalia launched operations against members of an international human trafficking ring and arrested 19 people.

According to “Spiegel Online,” the arrested members of this gang range in age from 21 to 44 years old and have been involved in the illegal transfer of migrants to Germany since at least April 2019 through a route known as the “Balkan route.”

Members of this gang were involved in illegally bringing approximately 140 people into Germany, mostly Syrian citizens, and received substantial sums of money from asylum seekers for doing so.

Organized Human Trafficking

Evidence has been obtained in at least 23 cases showing that the illegal transfer of foreigners to Germany was carried out in an organized manner through criminal activities.

According to federal police, the investigation into this gang began in August 2019 when a group driver was arrested on a highway near the Austrian border.

The prosecutor in Kempten, one of the border towns in southern Bavaria, successfully identified the gang leader in Austria in cooperation with officials from several other European countries and made his arrest possible.

Gang Members are Citizens of Syria, Libya, and Lebanon

Based on the prosecutor’s statement, the arrested individuals are suspected of belonging to a human trafficking gang and are citizens of Syria, Lebanon, and Libya who carried out their criminal activities with complete planning and in a professional manner.

To transfer illegal migrants, gang members used vehicles ahead of the vehicles carrying them to control the route and inform the smugglers of the possible presence of police officers or checkpoints.

In most cases, illegal migrants were forced to cross the entry borders into the European Union on foot under the guidance of human trafficking gang members. The gang leader also monitored border crossings from a safe distance using his smartphone.

Federal police officers say that in the Tuesday morning operation they had seven arrest warrants and eleven search warrants, and in their searches of the residences of the accused in various cities, they obtained numerous documents and evidence including smartphones used at the border.

The Balkan route is considered one of the main routes for illegal migrants to enter the European Union, and most people who take this route via Turkey are citizens of Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.

Source: DW