Three suspected members of migrant smuggling gangs have been arrested in northern Greece for allegedly ferrying westwards, squashed into cars, people who had just clandestinely entered from neighboring Turkey.
A police statement Monday said in one case 12 people, including the driver, had been squeezed into a car that was stopped in the Orestiada region in the northeastern Evros border region.
Later Sunday, police stopped a man carrying six migrants in his car in the Didymoteicho area, while a third arrest was made near Sapes where a suspected smuggler was transporting six people westwards.
Despite increased border security and a fence built along much of the frontier, thousands of people enter Greece from Turkey along the Evros land border every year. The vast majority then seek to travel further west to Europe’s prosperous heartland in pursuit of a better life.
So far this year, about 6,700 people from the Middle East and Africa have entered Greece illegally from Turkey and Libya, 1,800 of them across the Evros border and the rest by sea.
