EU police smash ring smuggling Vietnamese into Europe
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Migrants picked up at sea while attempting to cross the English Channel from France, at the Port of Dover in England on April 1. Such crossings are sometimes part of trips arranged by smugglers.
PHOTO: AFP
THE HAGUE - European Union police force Europol said on April 9 that they had smashed a criminal gang smuggling Vietnamese people into Europe, with a final destination of Britain via small boats across the Channel.
Europol said they had made eight arrests and seized passports, vehicles and cash in a French-led sting that took place on March 30.
Among the arrests was a network leader nabbed in Germany under a European warrant. The police arrested another high-level organiser in Hungary before the March 30 swoop.
The Vietnamese people entered the EU’s borderless Schengen Area in Hungary, with short-stay visas or residence permits, before travelling to France by air.
Once in France, they were held for a time in Paris before being transported to northern France and handed to a Kurdish-Iraqi group that arranged the dangerous Channel crossing in small boats.
“The members of this migrant smuggling network organised the entire journey, including logistics, accommodation and transport, relying on complicit drivers and facilitators,” Europol said in a statement.
They said the network transported at least 15 migrants a month, charging them up to €22,000 (S$32,700) for the full journey.
The plight of Vietnamese migrants making the hazardous trip to Europe was highlighted when 39 people suffocated to death in a refrigerated container on their way to Britain.
The bodies of the migrants – two of whom were just 15 years old – were discovered inside the sealed unit at a port near London in October 2019.
Europol announced on April 3 a similar operation targeting a different smuggling gang transporting Vietnamese migrants.
That operation, which also took place on March 30, resulted in 19 arrests. AFP
