In a massive international sweep, police across Europe on Monday detained 75 people suspected of funneling illegal immigrants — mainly Iraqi Kurds — into northern Europe, French officials said.
The sweep — dubbed “Operation Baghdad” — was the result of a broad investigation into a complex people-smuggling ring believed to have brought hundreds of people from Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in recent years to Britain, Ireland and countries in Scandinavia.
Nearly one-third of the arrests on Monday took place in France.
Paris prosecutors said in a statement that police had uncovered a “well-structured transnational cell” and arrested 24 people in the capital and other towns and cities.
Some 1,300 police officers from 10 European countries — Germany, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden — were mobilized for the investigation, the French Interior and Immigration Ministries said in a joint statement. Paris prosecutors said all those countries except Denmark had detained people believed to be linked to the ring.
The immigrants were mostly Iraqi Kurds, but also included people from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Iran and Turkey, the officials said. The Iraqi immigrants were generally taken through Turkey on the way to Scandinavia.
The would-be immigrants paid between US$9,300 and US$21,000 to be brought to Europe, French and German authorities said. France was mainly a transit point, the French officials said.
The suspects accused of operating the network were aged between 21 and 48 and included people from Iraq, Turkey, Morocco and other countries. Most were men. The alleged leader of the German operation was a 28-year-old Iraqi citizen.
William Spindler, a spokesman for the UN refugee agency in Geneva, urged authorities to consider the interests of refugees who at times count on human smugglers to help them flee.
“We welcome actions to crack down on human smugglers, some of whom are utterly ruthless characters who abuse, exploit, rob and sometimes even kill their clients. But it is important to ensure that their victims are properly protected,” he said.
“An unintended effect of cracking down on human smugglers — as important as that is — may be to close the only avenue left for refugees to escape persecution or conflict,” he said.
He noted some cases in which some Iraqis had been granted refugee status in European countries but were unable to get there without turning to people smugglers.
“For many refugees it is well nigh impossible to get passports, visas or plane tickets,” Spindler said. “They have to travel in an irregular way in order to save their lives and reach a secure place.”
In Belgium, police detained 10 people during raids on Monday in the capital, Brussels, and in nearby city of Leuven. Some of those detained are believed to be ring leaders, police officials said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS