German and Polish investigators are busy with proceedings against nine suspects from a family clan after a police raid. Two persons were arrested in Germany. There is a search ongoing for another person. The charges: organised trafficking of foreigners.
It was still dark when police chief Markus Pfau gave the order to more than 170 officers of the Federal Police. Their target was a Syrian-Polish gang of traffickers, who allegedly smuggled more than 100 persons from Syria into Germany.
As Pfau, leader of the investigating Federal Police office for crime fighting in Halle told the Lausitzer Rundschau, two people were arrested during country-wide raids.
One was a 26-year-old female Polish national of Syrian ethnicity, and a 40-year-old Syrian. They have been brought before the magistrate and are now in custody. A search for a third person is still ongoing, as well as for three more Polish nationals. There are a total of nine suspects.
The members of the gang are organised in a family-like structure, according to Federal Police. The main culprit behind the criminal operations is the 26-year-old who was arrested in Germany. She is the main accused.
Most of the accused are from Syria. Having migrated to Poland years ago, and grown up there, some of them married Polish citizens and therefore hold dual citizenship.
According to investigations by Federal Police, the gang of traffickers begun approximately in the second half of 2016 trafficking Syrians to Germany. Their method: The Syrians, who hadn’t been living in their homeland anymore, but in the Gulf region in the United Arab Emirates, received Polish tourist visas – providing false details with the help of the traffickers.
From the Gulf region, they flew to Poland – very likely to the capital of Warsaw – and then travelled on overland to Germany. The large Autobahn transits in Frankfurt at the Oder, Görlitz-Ludwigsdorf, but also Guben, Forst and Podrosche in Saxony were probably used.
Once in Germany, the Syrians applied for asylum, in order to be able to claim the benefits associated with it.
The investigations of Federal Police and Polish Border Protection might be able to shed new light on the repeated cases of trafficking in the border regions of Brandenburg and Saxony. Over the past months and years, large groups of refugees have repeatedly been apprehended who had crossed the border illegally. Most of these were however Iraqis and Russians from Islamic Chechnya.
According to Federal Police’s statements, the traffickers received about € 8 000 per person, which means that, according to the current state of investigations, the gang made about € 300 000. But if the police’s estimate of about 100 trafficked persons turns out to be correct, the gang’s earnings will be much more.
The current investigations of police end in the first quarter of 2017, which suggests more cases. The raid has been carried out in almost all German states. In Berlin, mobile phones, digital storage devices and a large sum of money were seized. Police spoke of “significant assets”.
According to police and judiciary, the accused have been charged with gang-like trafficking of foreigners. In addition, there are investigations against several of the accused for the suspicion of social fraud and fraudulent applications for asylum.
Some of the members of the Syrian-Polish family are suspected to have applied as politically persecuted asylum seekers in Germany.