Friday, March 29

Dismantled another organization that profited from passing migrants to France in the Irún and Bera area


The Civil Guard, in collaboration with the French National Police, has dismantled in Gipuzkoa and Navarra a criminal organization dedicated to profiting from the passage of migrants to France. In the course of the operation, three people have been arrested, as reported by the Delegation of the Government of Spain in Euskadi and collected by Europa Press.

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Two of the arrests in the so-called ‘Operation Trolley’ have been carried out in Gipuzkoa and Navarra. In parallel, through a European investigation order, a third individual allegedly involved in the criminal plot has been made available to the French Justice. A house search has also been carried out in the Navarran town of Bera, in which two mobile phones, two laptops and a GPS navigator have been seized, the contents of which will be analyzed by the authorities.

The ‘modus operandi’ of the organization consisted of capturing migrants who had the intention of crossing the border between Spain and France after arriving in the Peninsula through boats, coming from the north and west of Africa. The strict French controls and hot returns despite being an area of ​​free movement within the European Union and Schengen force migrants to seek dangerous alternative routes -there have been five deaths in the waters of the Bidasoa- or to resort to these mafias .

The criminal network investigated would present a “clear hierarchical distribution” of functions, in which the leader would hold the position of greatest responsibility, acting as a link or point of contact between the members of the organization and the migrants interested in crossing into French territory. In this way, under his own criteria, he set the conditions of the transfers and the prices to be demanded for them. Once the price to be paid to cross into the neighboring country had been agreed upon, mainly to the towns of Hendaye, Baiona and Bordeaux, the leader gave specific instructions to the rest of the members of the organization so that they would actively participate in the cross-border transfer.

According to the investigation, the detainees adopted “strong security measures” to hinder police work, such as the use of shuttle vehicles to carry out surveillance functions, with the aim of alerting police checkpoints and controlling the safety of the routes used for the transfer of migrants. Routes whose border points were less guarded than others were also used, “to have a greater probability of success.” The criminal network investigated had established a “vehicle-housing” in an area near the French border specifically intended for the concealment or cover-up of the migrants in the moments prior to the start of the transfers.

According to the State Security Forces, with these three arrests it has been possible to dismantle a criminal organization that would have carried out, during the last four months, some 40 transfers to France, transporting groups of between three and four people in each of them. The proceedings, along with those arrested in said operation, were made available to the Investigating Court number 5 of Pamplona (Navarra). The investigations were carried out under the coordination of the Specialized Immigration Area of ​​the Navarre Public Prosecutor’s Office.





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