European Union (EU) countries have arrested a ring of human traffickers using the Belarusian border to smuggle migrants into Europe.
According to Euronews, about 39 migrant smugglers have been apprehended by Europol in Poland, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania and Latvia.
The report revealed that Polish police have reinforced the border with Belarus to prevent mass illegal entries.
Lieutenant Anna Michalska, a spokeswoman for the Polish Border Guard, said this is a new trend of arrests in relation to people smuggled from Belarus into Polish territory.
“The Border Guard has already detained 39 people this year. These are the organisers and people operating at various levels of the hierarchy of this criminal group. These people did not necessarily know each other, they did not know who was operating at what level.”
It was revealed that the network used Turkey as the starting point of the journey and the migrants were sent to Moscow by plane. They were, then, move from the Russian capital to Belarus.
When the migrants are smuggled to the EU border, the network used secret transports to get them to Germany, the final destination, Michalska said.
