people smuggling

Two Italian police officers in Naples are among several alleged members of a criminal gang helping to smuggle illegal migrants into Italy, discovered by wiretaps.

After receiving information from a former jihadist, Italian police have arrested 15 suspects alleged to be part of an organisation that helped smuggle radical Islamic terrorists into the country as illegal immigrants and asylum seekers.

Austria has announced plans to automatically block asylum for migrants who arrive with the help of smugglers, with Chancellor Sebastian Kurz stressing the importance of “smashing the business model of human traffickers”.

A people-smuggling kingpin responsible for bringing hundreds of illegal migrants into Britain had been imprisoned in France following a cross-border criminal investigation.

Theresa May has said Facebook is “allowing people-smuggling adverts”, revealing the UK government is aware of more than 500 pages and posts allegedly advertising and facilitating illegal crossing.

According to the head of one of France’s most prominent asylum seeker support organisations, the global network of human traffickers which aid migrants across borders into Europe and elsewhere constitute a $32 billion (£25bn) industry.

Six men have been found guilty of trying to illegally smuggle Albanian migrants across the English Channel in speedboats.

Police have busted an alleged people-smuggling gang after intercepting a speedboat full of illegal migrants in the dead of night on the Dover coast on Friday.

VATICAN CITY (AP) – Pope Francis is urging everyone to combat the “shameful crime” of human trafficking, noting that it’s often linked to migrant smuggling.

Editor in chief of the Belgian edition of the women’s magazine Marie Claire, Anouk Van Gestel, has been accused of aiding migrants trying to cross illegally to the UK along with another Belgian journalist in a trial that began last week.

French police have disrupted an Iraqi gang suspected of trafficking around 40 migrants a day to Calais and into Britain, with three arrests made and vehicles seized.

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Police in Greece say a 30-year-old man was arrested for allegedly for trying to smuggle 50 people from the Mideast into the country in his van.

Swiss national Barbara Schwager, 56, faces potential prison time in Switzerland after she smuggled her 27-year-old illegal migrant boyfriend out of Switzerland to avoid his deportation back to Pakistan. The 56-year-old claims that she wants to marry her much younger partner Nadeem Akram

VIENNA (AP) — Austrian police say they have arrested a Bulgarian national after 18 migrants were found in the back of his truck during a search on the border with Hungary.

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Greek police announced they have arrested eight migrant traffickers who reportedly smuggled 38 migrants through Greece’s land border with Turkey.

Cyprus police say a 36-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly driving one of a pair of boats that brought 305 Syrian refugees to the island’s northwestern coast.

Facebook is hosting people smuggling advertisements, with gangs offering to take migrants to Europe and America, make them fake passports, and traffic them across the European Union (EU).

ROME (AP) — Greek authorities say they have arrested three men on suspicion of ferrying 69 refugees or migrants on a yacht to the island of Zakynthos off the western coast of Greece’s mainland.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has suspended its so-called “rescue” missions ferrying migrants across the Mediterranean to Europe.

Officials have warned of a new ‘back door’ illegal migration route opening and a wave of asylum seekers boating to the UK after a group of Iranian migrants arrived on British shores in a rubber dinghy.

The Italian government has released photographic evidence which they claim shows the German migrant rescue NGO Jugend Rettet cooperating with people smugglers off the Libyan coast.

The ringleader of people smuggling ring who illegally brought thousands of mostly-Iranian nationals into the UK has been apprehended at Heathrow airport.

ROME (AP) — Italian authorities ordered a German group’s migrant rescue vessel seized Wednesday, alleging that its crew took on migrants directly from smugglers’ boats near Libya’s coast.

The Cypriot police towed a boat filled with 143 Syrian migrants to the port of Latsi after authorities found the ship off the beach of nearby Pomos as many fear a new wave of migrants from Turkey. The migrant boat was

German Green Party leader in Hamburg Anna Gallina accompanied one of the several migrant rescue NGOs accused of either helping or encouraging people smugglers by the European Union.

ROME (AFP) – Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano on Saturday said he “agreed 100 percent” with a prosecutor’s repeated suggestions that some charity boats rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean are colluding with traffickers in Libya. Sicily-based prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro sparked a row

ROME (AFP) – An Italian court on Thursday acquitted a humanitarian activist who had faced a possible prison term for trying to help a family of Sudanese migrants cross from Italy into France.

Two Albanians and a polish lorry driver have been jailed for their involvement in the “appalling but profitable” people smuggling business, after 20 illegals migrants were found in the back of a lorry.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three employees with Swedish broadcaster SVT have been sentenced to community work after being convicted of human smuggling for bringing a 15-year Syrian boy to Sweden during the 2015 migrant influx that swept across Europe.

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Up to 700 migrants could arrive on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus next week on smuggling trips from Turkey, a top Cypriot official said Saturday, hours after 93 migrants landed in the dark on the island’s northwestern shore.