Italian police broke up a people smuggling ring on Sunday (January 29) in which migrants were packed into vans and shuttled to France from Italy for up to 1,000 euros ($1,063) each.
After a two-year investigation that documented 62 separate incidents of smuggling, police issued more than 30 arrest warrants for people trafficking, though about half were for people residing outside the country, a statement said.
“We opened one of these vans, which was padlocked shut, and we saw 40 people lying on top of each other,” Milan prosecutor Ilda Boccassini, who conducted the probe, told reporters at the Milan courthouse.
“They were having difficulty breathing when the police got them out,” she said.
Those arrested were mostly non-Italians who lived in the country legally, while the victims were mostly Syrians.
(Reuters)