Four more people have been arrested near Greece’s northeastern land border with Turkey on suspicion of ferrying migrants west in overloaded cars on behalf of smuggling networks, police said Thursday.
Authorities have arrested 20 suspected smugglers in the area over the past week.
A police statement said the suspects were involved in three separate incidents, in which a total 21 migrants were found squeezed into three cars. In one case, the suspect allegedly tried to escape a police roadblock by speeding off in a vehicle containing another seven people but was eventually stopped and detained.
Thousands of people from the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent still try every year to cross into Greece from Turkey along the land border, despite the fence that’s been built along much of the frontier – which roughly follows the course of the Evros river.
So far this year, more than 3,100 people have followed that route. From the border, most board cars laid on by smuggling networks that carry them west towards Thessaloniki, and from there seek to move on towards Europe’s prosperous heartland.
