Italian police say they disrupted migrant smuggling ring, 15 Egyptians arrested

Italian police said on Tuesday that they had dismantled a migrant smuggling network, leading to the arrests in several countries of 15 Egyptians involved in using sailing boats for dangerous illegal sea crossings from Turkiye to Greece and Italy, Reuters has reported.

According to an Italian police statement, the network facilitated the illegal entry into Italy of at least 3,000 migrants since 2021, earning more than $30 million by charging them $10,000 each.

The Italian police said that the arrests were made simultaneously in multiple countries with the cooperation of Albanian, German, Turkish and Omani police, coordinated by Italian anti-mafia prosecutors in Sicily and relying on Interpol and Europol. The smuggling network had been led by an Egyptian who ran operations from Istanbul, said the Italians.

“The organisation had set up a system that involved recruiting professional skippers [ships’ captains], almost all Egyptian, providing logistical support in Turkiye while the migrants waited to leave, and transporting them in sailing boats to the Greek and Italian coasts,” said Italian police.

Crossings departing from the Turkish ports of Bodrum, Izmir and Marmari took up to a week, with dozens of migrants crammed on board 12-15 metre boats with no life-saving equipment, the police explained.

Tens of thousands of migrants are believed to have died trying to cross the Mediterranean in recent years. The sea route from Turkiye to Italy has been particularly notorious since February 2023, when at least 94 people died off Cutro in southern Italy in one of the worst disasters of the crisis.

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