International trafficking ring that brought 3,000 migrants to Italy dismantled

Rome: An international criminal organisation that oversaw the trafficking of at least 3,000 migrants from Turkey to Italy has been dismantled. The smuggling group had been operating between Egypt, Turkey, Greece and Italy for years.

The criminal organization is accused of having “facilitated the clandestine entrance into Italy of at least 3,000 people since 2021,” resulting in an estimated revenue of at least 30 million euros, authorities said on April 08.

Seven Egyptian nationals have been arrested in connection with the anti-mafia operation in Italy’s southern city of Catania on the island of Sicily.

They had been wanted on charges of belonging to a criminal association for migrant trafficking as well as aiding and abetting clandestine migration — with the aggravating circumstance of operating in an international context.

Further arrests were carried out in the Italian provinces of Cosenza and Catanzaro as well as in Albania, Germania, Oman, and Turkey.

Eight other individuals remain under investigation but have so far managed to evade arrest on account of being located outside of the European Union.

The head of the central operating service of Italy’s state police, Vincenzo Nicolì, said that the operation had dismantled “one of the criminal groups that had been the most active over time in human trafficking” and that thus the operation was “a significant achievement.”

The operation against the criminal group named El Rais was conducted by anti-mafia security forces based in Syracuse, Sicily with the support of Europol, Interpol and Eurojust, the international police cooperation service.

An Egyptian national named Assad Ali Gomaa Khodir, also known as Abu Sufyen, who is believed to the alleged head of the criminal association, was arrested in Turkey.

Khodir had reportedly moved to the city of Istanbul to evade arrest warrants issued both in Egypt and in Turkey for his alleged involvement in trafficking crimes.

In Egypt, he had been sentenced to ten years in prison in absentia already.

The police operation came after the arrest of three foreign nationals believed to have steered a sailboat carrying migrants to the Italian port of Augusta.

The investigation revealed that the criminal group hired professional skippers in Egypt and then managed the logistics of migrants coming mainly from the Middle East and Africa remotely.

The journeys from the Turkish coastal towns of Bodrum, Izmir, and Marmaris could last as long as ten days, costing $10,000 per person.

Migrants bought to Italy would typically be crammed onto small sailboats measuring 12-15 meters in length designed at most for 25 passengers; however, up to eight times as many people would typically be squeezed onto these vessels, making them highly unseaworthy.

According to prosecutor Francesco Curcio, there’s at least one documented instance in which one of the boats sunk.

Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi commented that “(t)hose organising these journeys do it for money, without any respect for human life.”