MAYBE, JUST MAYBE ALL OF THOSE WHO PLAY THE HUMANITARIANS IN GREECE -OR EMBRACE THE ILLEGAL MOVEMENT OF PEOPLE- ACTUALLY ADVOCATE FOR HUMAN TRAFFICKING? THINK ABOUT IT.
Four foreign nationals have been arrested in Athens and Argolida and another three are wanted as members of an organized human trafficking ring that literally exploited the people they smuggled as work slaves, police said on Tuesday. In a coordinated operation by Attica Security Police in collaboration with security police of Nafplio and Argos, four Romanian nationals (two men and two women) aged 33, 41, 30 and 40 were arrested on Monday morning in Athens and Argolida while three more foreign nationals -two Romanians and a Turk- are wanted.
An investigation was launched after a complaint lodged by six Romanian nationals, and turned up that the ring members, using chartered buses via a tourist agency belonging to a Turkish man, who is wanted, would smuggle into the country people in dire financial condition from Romania with the promise of work on farms for 25 euros per day and free room and board provided by the employers.
Police found that the ring, using this method, had brought 41 laborers from Romania to a farming region in Argolida a month ago and turned them over to other ring members.
The ring members took away the Romanians' travel documents and put the up in an abandoned stable with no sanitation facilities, where they lived in absolute squalor. In the following days they forced the Romanians to work 12-hour days gathering oranges, without giving them the pay they had been promised, which was paid by the employers to the ring members. They also forced the Romanians to purchase food from them at exorbitant sums and did not allow them to leave the stable, for which they were forced to pay 50 euros a month each.
Three of the ring members were arrested during a raid on the stable, and 10 Romanians were freed, including two children who lived there and were forced to work under the same conditions.
A 40-year-old Romanian woman was arrested simultaneously in Athens, who was the legal representative in Greece of the tourist agency of the wanted Turk, who had organized the transfer.
Police found and confiscated 10,125 euros in cash, 31 Romanian identity cards, five passports, a hunting gun, six cell phones, a large number of notes containing dates, names and corresponding sums of money for collection of the wages of the laborers, and tourist office tickets.
The victims, who were in a bad physical and psychological condition, were provided with medical attention, assistance, and protection by the Security Police's organized crime and human trafficking division. The arrestees will be taken before a Nafplio prosecutor. (AMNA)
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