Police have carried out dawn raids in several cities in Germany and France in an internationally coordinated operation to smash a network accused of smuggling migrants to Britain in small boats.
Coordinated with Europol, the French security service and British police after months of intelligence-gathering, the raids on Wednesday concentrated on western German cities where gangs are believed to have procured small boats and found migrants wanting to be taken to the UK from France across the English Channel.
A network of Iraqi Kurds, some of whom are believed to be living in asylum seeker shelters in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is accused of “smuggling… irregular migrants from the Middle East and East Africa to France and the UK using small, inflatable boats”, Germany’s federal police said in a statement.
More than 500 officers took part in the
operation, which was connected to 10 international arrest warrants, in
locations ranging from asylum seeker shelters to private homes and
warehouses in cities including Essen, Bochum, Gelsenkirchen in NRW and
the southern state of Baden-Württemberg, as well as others in France.
The arrest warrants had been issued by a court in the French city of
Lille, German police said....<<<Read More>>>...
