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.
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