Italy arrests 13 Pakistani, Afghan and Iraqi suspects in ‘people trafficking ring’

Italian police officers stand at the port as the search continues for six passengers missing from a sailboat that sank off the coast of Porticello, north-western Sicily, on 19 August 2024. (AFP/File)

• The suspects were picked up in several Italian cities including Bologna, Rome and Milan on Sunday
• Investigators uncovered a ‘criminal organization rooted in Turkiye and Iraq,” with branches elsewhere

ROME: Italian police said Monday they had arrested 13 suspected members of a smuggling ring transporting migrants from the Middle East and South Asia into Italy and onto France.
The suspects, from Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, were picked up in several Italian cities including Bologna, Rome and Milan on Sunday, prosecutors in Catanzaro in the southern region of Calabria said.
They are accused of criminal association and money laundering.
Investigators had gathered evidence of a “criminal organization rooted in Turkiye and Iraq, with branches in Italy, France and Greece, dedicated to managing the sea transport of irregular migrants,” prosecutors said in a statement.
These migrants came from countries including Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Lebanon, and were brought onto the coasts of Calabria.
The organization had a network of compatriots who housed the arrivals in the Crotone area and bought train or bus tickets to the Italian border with France, where smugglers helped them pass via the Ventimiglia area.
Three commercial premises in Ventimiglia, Rome and Milan were also seized during the operation, the suspected locations of illegal money transfers using the “hawala” system, an informal method of payment based on trust that is far more difficult to trace than bank transfers.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has made clamping down on irregular migration a priority, hailed the arrests, saying her government was “determined to dismantle these criminal networks and to eradicate illegal human trafficking.”