Germany, France raid migrant-smuggling rings
BERLIN — German and French authorities raided two unconnected human-smuggling operations, saying Wednesday that the groups were taking migrants into Germany by plane and sneaking others across the English Channel by boat.
German federal police said nearly 600 officers searched 24 homes in three states as part of an investigation into a smuggling ring accused of taking primarily Lebanese and Syrian asylum seekers into Germany.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants have flooded to Germany in recent months, seeking to escape war and poverty and start new lives. Many of them pay smugglers to take them across borders.
The purported head of the group of 17 suspects, who was identified only as a 24-yearold man, was arrested in the western city of Essen. Police also confiscated weapons and good that were smuggled into Germany.
Federal police said the network operated mostly with forged passports and tried to take people to Germany via plane. The traffickers charged about $11,000 per person, which in most cases had to be paid in advance.
Many of the asylum seekers never made it to Germany, however, as their fake documents were recognized by authorities along the way.
One 10-person Lebanese family, for example, was detained in Malaysia for several weeks after being stopped there while en route to Germany, police said. Eventually, the family received assistance from the United Nations’ refugee agency in connection with the German Embassy and was allowed to travel to Germany for humanitarian reasons.
In France, the Interior Ministry said authorities on Monday and Tuesday detained eight people accused of involvement in smuggling migrants to Britain by rubber boat from the northern French city of Dunkirk.
The smugglers reportedly were charging up to $13,170 for the trip across the English Channel, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a statement.
Among those arrested were five Albanians and a French fisherman accused of ferrying migrants, mainly from Vietnam and Albania, Europe-1 radio reported.
Citing police, Europe-1 reported that the migrants would gather on a secluded beach near Dunkirk, and up to 20 would pile into a 10-person boat.
French authorities have dismantled 200 networks and detained more than 3,000 people this year in investigating human-trafficking networks, Cazeneuve said. He said French-British cooperation against illegal migration has been reinforced since he met Monday with British Home Secretary Theresa May.
Elsewhere, 30 migrants left Greece for Luxembourg on Wednesday, the first from Greece under a new European Union relocation plan.
The six families from Syria and Iraq marked the start of a program to relocate migrants who have arrived in Greece to other EU countries without them having to make the overland journey across the Balkans on foot.
More than 600,000 migrants have arrived in Greece this year, most in the past few months. Dozens of overcrowded inflatable dinghies and wooden boats reach Greek islands daily, even during bad weather. Hundreds have drowned as their overloaded and unseaworthy boats overturned or sank — more than 90 in the past week alone.
Five people — three children and two men — died Tuesday night after an accident involving a boat carrying 70 people. The coast guard said Wednesday that 65 people had been rescued.
Greek government and European officials present at the Athens airport for a departure ceremony stressed Wednesday’s flight was just a symbolic start to a program that will expand.
“Of course, we have full realization that this is just a start, that 30 people compared to thousands who have fled is just a drop in the ocean,” Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said. “But we aim to make this drop a stream.”
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel quelled a political push-back from Bavarian allies over her handling of the migrants.
A deal reached this week indicates Merkel is reasserting her control over the domestic political drift Germany has witnessed recently in coalition sniping that put her chancellorship in question. While she has said many external factors will determine whether the flow of migrants can be stemmed — from government action in Turkey to a diplomatic solution to end the war in Syria — Merkel also can take heart from the latest polling that suggests her party’s sliding support has halted.
“There were some threats, but Merkel treated it quite calmly,” said Manfred Guellner, head of Berlin-based pollster Forsa, adding that her party’s poll numbers have probably reached the bottom. “As far as power brokers in Berlin are concerned, nobody at the moment wants to risk the coalition in any serious way.”
The chancellor struck the agreement with her chief internal critic, Bavarian Premier Horst Seehofer, removing his threat of unilateral action to halt the influx of migrants. Merkel and Seehofer will meet today with Sigmar Gabriel — head of a junior coalition partner, the Social Democrats — to hammer out a final deal. All three have signaled in the past two days that they’re aiming to put the dispute behind them.
“We will see if we can find common ground,” Merkel told reporters Wednesday in Berlin. “If we don’t find an agreement, we have to continue negotiating. That wouldn’t be the first time, but everybody wants us to find a logical solution.”