Amy Mek
Spanish police announced on Friday that they had dismantled a network of smugglers who brought a thousand Algerian and Syrian migrants into Spain from Algeria before transporting them to other European countries, charging up to 20,000 euros per person. This criminal network is responsible for “the illegal entry into our country, thanks to fast boats chartered from Algeria, of more than 750 migrants of Syrian origin and more than 250 migrants of Algerian origin,” the police stated in a report.
The operation, which involved the Europol agency, resulted in the arrest of 21 individuals in the Madrid region, in Andalusia (south), where the boats arrived, and in the Basque Country (north) on the border with France. The network housed the migrants in Spain before organizing their transit to other European countries in exchange for sums of up to “20,000 euros,” the police reported. The criminal group had a branch established in the port city of Oran in Algeria, responsible for organizing the transport of migrants on fast boats, which were “overloaded” and “without any safety equipment,” the report continued.
The Syrians and Algerians arrived on the Spanish coast “at night and in areas that were difficult to access, far from urban centers,” where they were picked up by members of the criminal group and taken to Madrid. The network had numerous apartments where the migrants “were crammed together and housed in unsanitary conditions,” the police added. If the migrants wanted to reach another European country, the network provided them with passports and plane tickets or transported them by road. The organization may have earned 1.5 million euros through these activities.
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