Italy Begins Military Effort to Quell Crime

From the New York Times:

By Elisabetta Povoledo
August 5, 2008

ROME — Soldiers were deployed throughout Italy on Monday to embassies, subway and railway stations, as part of broader government measures to fight violent crime here for which illegal immigrants are broadly blamed.

By the time it is fully effective next week, the effort will flank regular police officers and the military police with 3,000 troops, a visible signal to citizens that the government “has responded to their demands for greater security,” Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa said in an interview on the Italian Sky News channel.

The conservative government of Silvio Berlusconi won elections in April while promising to crack down on petty crime and illegal immigrants. The new patrols of soldiers, who are not empowered to make arrests, do not seem aimed only at illegal immigrants, though the patrols were deployed to centers where illegal immigrants are housed.

“Security is something concrete,” Mr. La Russa said on Monday. The troops, he said, will be a “deterrent to criminals.”

Critics of the government have condemned the deployment as a superfluous measure that could prove counterproductive.

“Putting troops on the street sends a dramatic message that the situation is more serious than it is in reality,” said Marco Minniti, the shadow interior minister of the center-left Democratic Party, the largest opposition party.

Television news stations showed military officials searching immigrants’ suitcases at subway stations. Potential terrorist targets were also under greater scrutiny. In Milan, troops were stationed around the city’s Gothic cathedral, and in Naples they watched the American Consulate.

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Thai Woman Jailed for 14 Years on Trafficking Charges

From the Macau Daily Times:

Thailand's criminal court yesterday sentenced a 63-year-old women to 14 years in prison for trafficking young women to Italy, a court official and a child rights groups said.

Jomsri Srisam-aung, from Thailand's poor northeast, lured two women in their 20s and 30s from her hometown with the promise of work in her daughter's restaurant, a statement from the Fight Against Child Exploitation (FACE) said.

But when the two women arrived in Italy via France in 2005, they were told no jobs were available at the restaurant and they had to work as prostitutes to repay the money Jomsri lent to them to travel to Europe.

The two victims were rescued by Italian police in 2006 and sent home.

"Jomsri was sentenced to 14 years in prison," a court official said. "The suspect has many similar cases awaiting trial and sentencing."

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Members of Indo-Pakistani Human Trafficking Gang Arrested in Italy

From AKI:

BRESCIA, Italy, February 27, 2008- Police in the northern Italian city of Brescia said on Wednesday that they arrested 8 people in connection with an Indo-Pakistani organised crime gang accused of human trafficking.

Through the operation, dubbed "Orient Express", the police discovered that the immigrants pay as much as 20,000 euros to arrange for their travel from India and Pakistan to Europe.

It is believed that after they leave the Asian continent, the immigrants cross through Russia to finally arrive at the borders of the European Union.

The human trafficking gang, made up of people of Indian and Pakistani origin, allegedly had numerous connections with other European countries and Brescia was considered the gang's headquarters.

After the immigrants arrive in Italy, they are put into vans and taken to various European countries, such as Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, and Britain, where they were employed in the black economy.

The vans used to transport the immigrants would be rented vehicles which made them difficult to trace.

The Brescia police also reportedly raided a Sikh temple in the northern city of Flero, where they found illegal immigrants of Indian nationality in hiding, as well as vehicles reportedly used for the transfer of the other immigrants.

It is believed that the immigrants were kept in a safe house and inside the Sikh temple, while they waited for their eventual transfer.

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Italy Arrests 400 in Illegal Immigrants Swoop

No mention on whether any of the arrested illegal migrants were victims of trafficking. The article does, however, mention that some of the migrants were arrested on charges of prostitution. According to the U.S. Department of State, Italy has a strong record of combating trafficking.

By Stephen Brown

From Reuters:

Italian police announced on Thursday the arrest of hundreds of suspected illegal immigrants in a sign of the new right-wing government's determination to clamp down.

Police arrested 383 people including 268 foreigners, with 53 immediately taken to the border for expulsion, in a week-long operation stretching from northern Italy to the Naples area.

Silvio Berlusconi swept back to power for a third term as prime minister last week promising to get tough on illegal immigrants, blamed by many for crime. He is readying new laws to screen immigrants and jail or expel those breaking the law.

Those arrested came from Eastern Europe, Albania, Greece, North Africa and China and face charges ranging from illegal entry into Italy to prostitution, drug trafficking and robbery.

In Libya, police have arrested 240 would-be illegal migrants from several African countries over the past four days as they prepared to sail to Italy, the Interior Ministry said.

Libya is a springboard for hundreds of thousands of Africans trying to reach Europe via Italy on board unseaworthy boats.

The policeman in charge of the Italian operation, Francesco Gratteri, told a news conference the sweep "wasn't aimed at any specific category or ethnic group. The sole objective were criminals who have caused a sensation of rising alarm in society".

The focus of Italian concern about immigrant crime are the Roma, known here as "nomads", who come mainly from Romania and other Eastern European countries. In Rome, police raided the biggest Roma camp and took away about 50 men for questioning.

The arrests coincided with a visit by Romanian Interior Minister Cristian David. Romania has Europe's biggest Roma population and its prime minister warned this week that Italy's crackdown could cause "xenophobia" against other Romanians.

Italy has tried to reassure the fellow European Union member that Romanians are not being targeted. The two countries have launched a joint police effort and Romania will despatch a task force of 15 officers to work with Italian police this month.

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Italian Police Smash Nigerian Drug Gangs

From VOA News:

Italy's anti-Mafia unit has smashed a Nigerian drug and human-trafficking ring that forced hundreds of women into prostitution. Police say dozens of Nigerians were arrested in Italy on Tuesday and 15 others in European countries including the Netherlands.

Operation Viola ended early Tuesday carried out by Italian and Dutch police with the help of Interpol. A total of 66 Nigerian citizens were arrested, mainly in Italy, accused of smuggling compatriots into Europe to work as prostitutes and drug dealers. Police said 51 suspects were arrested and are accused of being affiliated with the Italian mafia who have been linked to human trafficking, slavery, kidnapping and international drug trafficking.

Police also uncovered "serious adoption irregularities" in which Nigerian women living in Italy were able to take infants from Nigerian orphanages and sell them abroad.

One of the police chiefs involved in the operation said one of the most chilling and touching aspects from a human point of view was the way these women were forced into slavery, the way the were trafficked. These women, he said, were completely subjugated with voodoo rites.

Expressing satisfaction at the outcome of the operation, Interior Minister Giuliano Amato noted "a powerful international organization that exploited human beings and in particular minors has been smashed." "These are extremely serious crimes that have brought slavery back, feeding off poverty," he said.

Amato added that law enforcement needed to be inflexible with these criminals, and thanks to great police work, excellent results are being achieved.

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I find this article particularly interesting because of the use of unusual cultural factors, in this case voodoo, to control the trafficking victims. It's also good to see law enforcement agencies working together (Italian & Dutch police & Interpol). I will keep track of this and see what happens in court- now it's up to the criminal justice system to convict the offenders.

Operation Busts Trafficking Ring with Victims from Nigeria

Sorry for my hiatus. A bit of holiday traveling kept me from contributing as I should. Back to work! From the IHT:

Italian and Dutch authorities on Tuesday arrested dozens of Nigerians accused of smuggling their compatriots into Europe to work as prostitutes and drug traffickers, police said.

The police operation also uncovered that it called "serious adoption irregularities" in which Nigerian women living in Italy were apparently able to take infants from Nigerian orphanages and then sell them abroad, a police statement said.

Officials offered few details at a news conference, saying that they knew of only one case in which two children were taken from an orphanage and handed over to a prostitution "madam" in Italy. But officials said they believed it was a growing trade and that one aspect of the investigation would now focus on contacting Nigerian authorities to ensure that such illegal international adoptions end.

Overall, authorities carried out 66 arrest warrants early Tuesday, all but 15 of them in Italy...

The suspects in Italy are accused of mafia association, criminal association aimed at human trafficking, slavery, kidnapping, and international drug trafficking, police said.

Many of those arrested were prostitution madams, who pay thousands of euros for each new girl to be smuggled into the country, said Giovanni Conzo, an anti-mafia prosecutor in Naples where the Nigerian operation carried out much of its work.

Other young Nigerians were used as drug mules, paid about 3000 Euros per trip to swallow cocaine or heroin in condoms and transport it around Europe, he said.

As the article states, few details were released curtailing the variety of information available on the actual bust. The BBC mentioned that the gang's activities earned the organization hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Human and drug trafficking are two of the most lucrative international crimes, along with arms trafficking. The operation has been an on-going investigation and prosecution process with around 150 people arrested in the last year. This probably should have been more obvious, but something I found nonetheless interesting, the investigation has found that drug smuggling has been able to go low-cost due to the availability of low-cost travel (particularly air fare) in Europe.

The only thing in the article I didn't find encouraging was the statement made by Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Arnato, which alluded to the arrests being proof of a new slave trade growing in Europe, taking advantage of poor Nigerians. Only in the sense that awareness and reaction, is the problem new. In fact, some of the hits I got while trying to get more information on the arrests led to articles from as early as 2001 detailing the horror of Nigerian children trafficked into Europe in large numbers.

Making Noise, Inc. is a non-profit media group that focuses using communication to raise awareness about social justice issues in Africa. They run a small blog on their site dedicated to Nigerian sex-trafficking to Italy. The promo was not ok, but the information in the blog posts is interesting.

Probably the most informative source I found was an article from Migration Information Source, a project of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington DC, is an informational webpage with articles and statistics from every region of the world on migration issues. Their July 2005 paper on "Trafficking in Women from Nigeria to Europe," while limited in the scope of victims, provides the reader with information on the process of trafficking from Nigeria to Europe from start to finish, including the settings of Nigeria and Italy (push and pull factors), how the women are trafficked, the usual route of traffickers to Italy from Africa, how the criminal organization sustains itself, etc. I was very impressed and if the arrest prompts you to take a further look into the problem specifically dealing with Africa and Italy, I highly suggest this site.