[Handout/Hellenic Police]
Four suspected members of smuggling rings have been arrested in a single day near Greece’s northeastern land border with Turkey allegedly driving cars dangerously overloaded with migrants, authorities said Tuesday.
A police statement said the suspects, identified as one Greek and three foreign nationals, were taken into custody in four separate instances Monday carrying a total 24 migrants in their cars. In one case, ten people, including the driver, had been squashed into a vehicle designed for no more than five.
Even though Greece has built a high fence along much of its land border with Turkey, which mostly follows the course of the river Evros, thousands of people from the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent slip across every year, seeking a better life deeper inside Europe’s affluent heartland.
So far this year, more than 3,100 of the roughly 15,000 migrant arrivals by land and sea have crossed the Evros border. The main arrival point nationwide is the southern island of Crete, where about 8,000 people have made landfall after crossing in small boats from eastern Libya.
