‘Malta’s Passeur’: The leader of human trafficking between Malta and Italy arrested in France
A leader from Guinea of a human trafficking ring that smuggled in hundreds of irregular migrants who used Malta as a temporary place where they were given false papers to travel by plane to Italy has been arrested in France of a European Arrest Warrant issued by the courts. of Treviso.
The human trafficker is one of the three Guineans involved in the ‘Operation Malta’s Passeur’ of October 2019, which revealed how hundreds of migrants entered Italy from a number of airports on scheduled flights from Malta using documents of forged identity.
The operation was led by the Fiamme Gialle of Treviso with the collaboration of the Guardia di Finanza and the Ministry of the Interior.
The initial investigations began when two illegal African immigrants in a flight from Malta were arrested at Treviso airport. Both were using the same fake passport whose identity actually belonged to the same third person.
Through subsequent investigations – including telephone interceptions, analysis of passenger lists and flight reservations and examination of suspects’ bank accounts – Italian investigators were able to reconstruct the “proven” system and tested” developed by the Guineans to smuggle dozens of African migrants into Italy. using Malta as a base of stay.
Before going to their final destination of Italy, the investigators said that the migrants were first picked up in Malta where they received temporary accommodation and false identity documents from the suspects themselves.
After that, they were put on flights to Treviso, Rome Ciampino, Rome Fiumicino, Bari, Turin, Orio al Serio, Naples, Perugia, as well as on ferries to Catania.
The rate being paid for entering Italy from Malta, the investigators determined, was between €450 and €700.
The unnamed individual arrested in France this week was originally arrested in Naples, where he was found in possession of false identity documents and passports for use by the ring’s clients.
Those documents as well as the content of chats found on the mobile phones led the Italian investigators to believe that the operation was much bigger than originally thought and that the ring could have sent hundreds of irregular migrants to the -Italy through the Malta route that they had developed.
Later the suspect fled to France, where he was arrested this week in Orléans on a European Arrest Warrant. He will soon appear before the Treviso courts on charges of aggravated aiding and abetting illegal immigration.