SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnian prosecutors have charged 16 people with smuggling more than 850 illegal migrants to EU countries last year, the state prosecutor’s office said on Friday.
The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in a statement, said that Bosnian police agencies, cooperating with foreign agencies, had broken an organised criminal ring consisting of Bosnians and foreigners who had smuggled the illegal migrants from Bosnia to Croatia and other European Union countries between September and December 2020.
Since 2017, Bosnia has become a transit route for migrants from Asia and North Africa on their way to wealthier countries in the West. But many have remained stuck in the Balkan country as EU countries have tightened their borders.
There are about 6,000 migrants currently stationed in Bosnia, most of them from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the International Organisation for Migrations. Most of them are in reception camps but many are also staying in abandoned houses and forest camps in western Bosnia, near the Croatian border.
(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Susan Fenton)
