Police have arrested suspected people smugglers they say made €30 million ($33.1 million) from taking migrants across the Mediterranean.
The gang relied mainly on Egyptian skippers to transport about 3,000 people in sailing boats, each paying €10,000, from Turkey to Italy and Greece, said Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency.
Police arrested two members in Italy, one in Germany, one in Albania, one in Turkey and one in Oman, while an arrest warrant was issued for another suspect in custody in Italy.
The investigation into the gang began after an incident in May 2022, when Italian authorities intercepted a sailing vessel off the country’s coast. The vessel, operated by Egyptian captains, was alleged to have left Turkey with 87 Afghan and Syrian migrants.
“Italian authorities uncovered a series of similar transports in various regions, orchestrated by the same criminal network,” said Europol.
The Egyptian criminal network is believed to have had cells in Turkey, Egypt, Greece and Italy, with members responsible for different tasks.
Each member of the gang had responsibility for recruiting skippers, communicating with illegal migrants through social media and instant messaging platforms, transferring money and providing temporary shelter along the way.
According to Europol, Egyptians have increasingly been involved in smuggling on routes into and throughout the EU, including the Mediterranean and the western Balkan routes.
Among them is UK-based people smuggler Ahmed Ebid who admitted organising crossings from Libya to Italy.
He was living in Isleworth, London, at the time of his offences. He pleaded guilty to people-smuggling offences.
The court was told that Ebid made more than £12 million ($15.5 million) from sending thousands of migrants across the Mediterranean in an operation he ran from his London home.
The former fisherman was linked to the smuggling operation after he made phone calls to satellite phones on board the migrant boats.
Those numbers were then used to call the Italian coastguard telling it the location of the migrant ships, so they could be towed to safety and those on board taken ashore.
The arrests of the Egyptian gang come after two Syrians suspected of smuggling hundreds of migrants across the Mediterranean were arrested in Libya in a joint operation with the NCA.
In what the agency describes as the “most significant arrest”, Libyan police detained a “significant member” of a suspected Syrian people-smuggling network alleged to have moved “at least 2,000 people” into Europe using fragile fibreglass boats.
When his phone was examined after his arrest on March 12 there was evidence that suggested the end destination for some of those travelling would have been the UK.
Two days earlier, police in Sabratha arrested another Syrian, who is suspected of arranging the transport of about 400 migrants. He is alleged to have been part of a network involved in the large-scale smuggling of people in boats
