War veterans hunt human traffic gangs at frontier
WITH a century of military experience between them, their antennae are finely tuned for trouble. But the battle-hardened group of war veterans was stunned at how quickly they happened upon it at the Ukrainian border.
The Mail on Sunday last week accompanied the team of ten British security specialists, who all served in Afghanistan and are now protecting women from sex-trafficking gangs operating around Poland’s busiest crossing at Medyka.
It took just 30 seconds before their suspicions were aroused. One of the ex-soldiers, Billy Wright, pointed to a pair of burly men sitting outside a cafe across from the border.
Both were keenly switching their attention from the new arrivals to their mobile phone screens.
‘They don’t even try and blend in,’ said Billy. ‘It’s blatant. I would be 100% certain they are looking for someone specific.’
One of the volunteers managed to take a look at a man’s phone and counted more than a dozen photographs of what appeared to be different Ukrainian families.
Billy, who travelled to Poland from Australia just two days after the Russian
invasion, explained that the gangs operate by having look-outs who scout for potential victims on the Ukrainian side.
The 38-year-old said: ‘The going rate now for a girl in her 20s is £145,000.
‘They will then take a picture of them as they get on the train at Lviv or at the Ukrainian border and send that through to the men waiting on this side.’
In just 15 minutes, eight men were identified as suspected traffickers.
‘We have to be careful,’ said Billy. ‘It’s about surveillance. We take pictures covertly and put them into a database that we can share with the antitrafficking charities at the border – and the police.
‘Only when we see them approach the women, trying to lure them, do we act.’
The MoS was with Billy when he saw two men asking a woman if she wanted a lift. Using Google translate on his phone Billy quickly typed a warning message and showed it to the woman.