Interpol's largest operation to fight human trafficking and migrant smuggling saves thousands

Arrests across globe as crime-fighting organisation reports rescue of more than 3,000 potential victims

Operation Liberterra II led to the rescue of 3,222 potential victims of human trafficking and identified 17,793 irregular migrants. Photo: Nicola Vigilanti

Thousands of victims have been rescued and hundreds of suspects arrested in Interpol’s biggest operation to tackle people trafficking and migrant smuggling, the global crime-fighting organisation has revealed.

The five-day operation has revealed the scale of the people movement across the globe and the misery of those exploited by organised crime gangs.

Interpol released details of the recent operation, named Operation Liberterra II, at its annual general assembly in Glasgow on Wednesday. Raids by law enforcement and other authorities led to the rescue of 3,222 potential victims of human trafficking and identified 17,793 irregular migrants, said Interpol.

During Operation Liberterra II, 2,517 arrests were made, 850 of which were specifically on human trafficking or migrant smuggling charges.

The action included:

• The rescue of 1,500 irregular migrants and the arrest of 94 suspected smugglers in Turkey.
• UK authorities arrested a 32-year-old Syrian man in Nottingham. He was wanted by Romania for illegally transporting migrants from Bulgaria to the country for onward travel to the Netherlands.
• Tunisian authorities intercepted 27 people, including 21 minors, attempting to travel to Britain under the pretence of a language study trip.
• Seven suspects were arrested in Algeria on money laundering charges in connection with organising migrant smuggling.
• Serbian police arrested 12 suspects linked to two organised criminal groups which enabled the journeys of at least 178 irregular migrants to Bosnia and Herzegovina, a common route for migrants from the Middle East.
• Authorities in Montenegro arrested 11 members of an organised group suspected of smuggling 350 migrants from Asia into the European Union. Police recovered cash, phones, vehicles, asylum documents and foreign passports.

Details of the Interpol operation come as 18 members of an Iraqi-Kurdish-led smuggling gang were sentenced to prison terms of up to 15 years by a court in Lille, France.

Richard Chambers, Interpol’s director of organised and emerging crime, told The National: “It's not a short game, so if any country thinks putting a certain number of people in jail is the end of it, they are kidding themselves,” he said.

“The reality is that organised crime groups operate a business model. You can take out some players, but you've got to keep out taking the players that then fill those gaps. When countries make arrests it often leads to the next thing. Through those investigations, we find another group operating.

“The gangs are always looking for new, better, faster and harder-to-detect means of doing stuff. Our role is to keep to pace with it.”

Interpol reported that the operation involved the monitoring of about 24,000 flights. Officers were also sent to known trafficking and smuggling hotspots, while about eight million checks were carried out against Interpol databases.

The organisation reported that Operation Liberterra II detected an increasing number of Asian migrants, particularly Vietnamese, in the Americas. But it said Venezuelan citizens were the largest group of irregular migrants reported by participating countries, with most moving to North America and other South American states.

Mr Chambers said he was “blown away by the results” that brought home to him the transnational nature of people trafficking and migrant smuggling.

“Liberterra allowed us to really shine a spotlight on what can be achieved in one week, and those results were more than what I was expecting but I think it points to the significance of the problem,” he said. “So what about 51 other weeks of the year?”

He said the transportation of humans across the globe “is a growing business and so it's our growing business”. He said: “The UK has seen this, Europe has seen this, America has seen this. So when, when there are challenges globally, what comes out of that is vulnerability, and organised crime groups will export that vulnerability.”

Interpol said that, as part of the operation, authorities in Syria identified a group of doctors suspected of organ trafficking. In Iraq, 25 people were arrested in connection with a trafficking ring involved in forced begging.

Officers also raided a warehouse in the Philippines where more than 250 people, mostly Chinese citizens, were running romance scams on an industrial scale. Officers are now examining seized devices and carrying out interviews to separate the potential victims of trafficking from members of the criminal enterprise.

“In their relentless pursuit of profit, organised crime groups continue to exploit men, women and children – often multiple times over,” said Jurgen Stock, the outgoing Interpol secretary general. “While still preliminary, the results of this operation highlight the vast scale of the challenge facing law enforcement, underscoring that only co-ordinated action can counteract these threats.”

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