Smugglers offer ‘luxury’ refugee crossing

Smuggling gangs are increasingly hiring Ukrainian sailors to captain yachts and other luxury boats for migrants willing to pay up to $8 000 for safe passage to Europe, Italian police said on Wednesday, after two people were arrested.

On Tuesday, Italian police arrested two Ukrainians accused of trying to smuggle 50 Pakistani men to Italy on a 12m yacht, the latest incident involving professional Ukrainian sailors and a luxury vessel, a senior police official said.

“It’s a growing phenomenon,” said the official, who declined to be named because he is not authorised to speak to journalists.

Italy is on the frontline of Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War II. More than 93 000 people have reached its shores so far this year, the interior ministry said.

Most migrants travel from North Africa on rickety, overcrowded boats that often capsize or sink. One in every 42 migrants dies during the crossing, according to estimates by the United Nations Refugees Agency.

But in recent years smugglers have also been offering “luxury journeys” on seaworthy vessels manned by qualified sailors at a cost of between $6 000 and $8 000 a passenger, about four times the average price of a normal crossing, the police official said.

He told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that some Ukrainian sailors were looking for opportunities to make some money and possibly leave their country, where proRussian eastern separatists rose up against the government in 2014.

The suspects arrested on Tuesday, aged 21 and 25, were in charge of a Turkish-flagged boat, which police believe had set sail from Turkey. The boat was intercepted off the Apulia coast on Monday evening.

Police said they had launched an investigation.

“Elements acquired during the operation will help detectives track down the crime syndicate profiting from desperate people fleeing war,” police said in a statement.

Since last year, Italian police have arrested at least 65 suspected smugglers of Ukrainian origin, the police official said. — Thomson Reuters Foundation