Yahoo – AFP,
Jan Hennop, 24 Sep 2014
The Hague (AFP) - Police have arrested more than 1,000 suspects and rescued at least 30 trafficked children in an unprecedented swoop on organised crime groups across Europe, Europol's chief said on Wednesday.
A Bulgarian police unit participates in an anti-terror drill in the capital Sofia on June 15, 2010 (AFP Photo/Dimitar Dilkoff) |
The Hague (AFP) - Police have arrested more than 1,000 suspects and rescued at least 30 trafficked children in an unprecedented swoop on organised crime groups across Europe, Europol's chief said on Wednesday.
The
continent-wide raids targeted gangs involved in people trafficking, cybercrime,
narcotics and illegal gun trafficking, among others.
Carried out
by some 20,000 officers between September 15-23, Operation Archimedes "was
the single largest coordinated assault an organised crime in Europe," Rob
Wainwright told reporters in The Hague.
"The
scale of the operation is unprecedented," he added.
Police
officers from all 28 European Union members, as well as Australia, Colombia,
Norway, the United States, Serbia and Switzerland, carried out 250 operations
in some 300 cities, ports and border crossings across Europe.
"We
designed an operation specifically to hit criminal infrastructure,"
Wainwright said at Europol's fortress-like headquarters in The Hague.
"Multiple
criminal enterprises, some of them the most serious, have been disrupted right
across Europe," he said, adding that the operation targeted "the
infrastructure as a whole and not just isolated cases".
Italian
police chief Allesandro Pansa said that the Mediterranean and Balkans had been
"particular hotspots".
In total,
1,027 arrest were made, including 250 in Spain and 200 in Bulgaria.
Police
focused on the growing threat of cybercrime, with criminal networks using the
Internet for cross-border crimes, including money laundering.
In one of
the raids, 30 Romanian children were saved from child traffickers aiming to use
the victims as sex slaves or slave labour, Wainwright said.
In total,
94 trafficking suspects were arrested, with police checking the identity of
over 10,000 illegal immigrants.
Law
officers seized around 600 kilos (1,320 pounds) of cocaine, 1.3 tonnes of
cannabis and 200 kilos of heroin.
They also
dismantled a laboratory used for making counterfeit medicine, confiscated 13
luxury cars and seized 1.5 million contraband cigarettes as well as one million
euros ($1.3 million) in cash.
Police
intercepted over 40 packages of cocaine sent from Colombia to Europe and
several couriers carrying the drug.
Searches
and arrests were made at four airports and two harbours in Colombia.
"More
arrests are expected to follow," said Wainwright, adding that the
operation had uncovered leads to be followed up in the "months and
years" to come.
It also
uncovered new routes used by criminal networks such as human traffickers and
identified new criminal trends, he said.
The swoop
was coordinated by Europol, whose command centre in The Hague was operating
"24/7" Wainwright said.
"The
operation sends a very clear message," he said.
"It
clearly tells the criminal community... there will be no safe place for them to
carry out their activities."
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.