Bosnia arrests eight human-trafficking suspects

SARAJEVO: Bosnian police arrested eight people suspected of being part of a human trafficking ring that smuggled at least 1,400 illegal migrants to Italy, authorities said on Wednesday.

“Members of the criminal group organised the trafficking of at least 1,400 illegal migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Eritrea and China,” Dragana Kerkez, a spokeswoman for the interior ministry in Bosnia´s Serb-run statelet, told AFP.

The eight suspects were arrested in several towns across northern Bosnia during an operation carried out in cooperation with Europol and Croatian, Slovenian and Italian police. During the raids, police also seized weapons, over 100,000 marks ($55,000) and used cars and boats, the spokeswoman said, adding that the group was also suspected of trafficking drugs.

The group used the Sky ECC encrypted communications network system, which was cracked in 2019 by a team of Belgian, Dutch and French investigators. That gave authorities unprecedented access to the information on the practices of some of the most dangerous criminal groups, including ones in the Balkans.

Bosnia lies along the so-called “Balkan route” that migrants regularly use to reach the European Union. According to Kerkez, the group trafficked migrants by first taking them to neighbouring Croatia.

From there, they were transported in cars and trucks to Italy, she added. Bosnian and Croatian authorities regularly arrest human traffickers in an ongoing crackdown hoping to stem the surge of migrants heading to the EU.

During the first nine months of the year, 1,430 migrant smugglers were arrested in Croatia, according to official figures -- marking a nearly 40-percent increase compared with the same period last year. In August, 12 migrants died when their boat capsized as they tried to cross a river between Bosnia and Serbia.