Five people have been arrested in Rome and Brussels for allegedly smuggling migrants from Turkey to western Europe via private aircraft, and two jets have been seized.
Italian police said the suspects, held on warrants issued by Belgian authorities, are accused of charging around €10,000 ($10,000) each to smuggle the migrants. The police believe the suspects to belong to a criminal organisation aimed at abetting illegal immigration, according to Reuters.
The two jets, seized by Belgian police, are reportedly worth €426,000.
The suspects allegedly gave the migrants fake diplomatic identification papers from St. Kitts and Nevis and put them on flights heading to the Caribbean country with stopovers in Europe. Once in Europe, the migrants would declare their real identity and apply for asylum.
Five separate landings were documented in Italy, Germany, France, Austria and Belgium between October and December 2020.
Following a joint investigation by the five European authorities, an Italian man and two Egyptian men were detained in Rome, while another Egyptian and a Tunisian woman were arrested in Brussels. Two more suspects remain at large in Italy and Belgium, according to Italian police chief Costantino Scudieri.
In 2019, a French court sentenced seven men to terms of up to 18 years of prison for smuggling 680kgs of cocaine on a Falcon 50 from the Dominican Republic, intending to fly to Saint-Tropez in France.
