Belgian and Dutch police arrested three Iraqis last week suspected of smuggling Iraqi families to the United Kingdom.
Two of the Iraqis were arrested at a parking lot along the highway near Froyennes, in the border area with France, near Lille. Last Wednesday, a 34-year-old Iraqi was arrested in the Netherlands; this has yet to be extradited to Belgium, he said notices of the Belgian justice system.
The three arrests followed the discovery this spring of several Iraqi families in refrigerated containers in and around Zeebrugge. A family of five Iraqis, including two children aged four and seven, camped on top of the cargo in the container in low temperatures in March. A month later, a family from Iraq, including a pregnant woman and a three-year-old child, were discovered in another refrigerated truck. This came from Tournai and was destined for the United Kingdom.
Cooperation
“It is thanks to the good cooperation with colleagues from across the language border that the situation surrounding the Froyennes highway car park and the organization could be mapped out even better,” prosecutor Frank Demeester told the Belgian press. “People smugglers are more and more active throughout Belgian territory to reduce the chances of being caught.”
The Royal Military Police, actively involved in the investigation of human smuggling in the Netherlands, states that its intelligence department contributed to the preparations for the arrests of the three Iraqis. “There is a lot of cooperation in this area and a lot of research is taking place under the flag of Europol,” said a spokesperson for the military police.
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