[Handout/Hellenic Coast Guard]
A joint operation with Greece’s intelligence service has led to the Coast Guard discovering a new illegal migration route from Turkey to the southern island of Crete, officials said Thursday.
The Coast Guard and the European Union’s Frontex border agency have been focusing their efforts against illegal migration on the southern approach to Crete from Libya, the most heavily-used route into Greece that has seen more than 4,500 people crossing so far this year.
A Coast Guard statement said that four undocumented migrants from Morocco and Syria were apprehended at the island’s port of Iraklio Tuesday trying to board a ferry bound for Piraeus.
The four were established to have arrived earlier Tuesday by sailboat in the northeastern harbor of Siteia, after a two-day journey from the Turkish coast. Based on their description, authorities located the Malaysian-flagged yacht moored in Siteia and arrested a 48-year-old Ukrainian man whom the migrants identified as having skippered the vessel, the statement said.
