Human traffic gang members arrested as others are sentenced

According to a spokesperson for the Brussels prosecutor’s office, the men were arrested at home, with house searches carried out in Schaarbeek, Sint-Joost, Brussels-City, Laken, Anderlecht, Molenbeek, Koekelberg, Sint-Gillis and Elsene. Police then moved on to search the car parks by the side of the E40 used as staging points for human traffickers, where migrants can be hidden in lorries to make the crossing to the UK.

Those searches turned up 38 of the traffickers’ victims, hoping to reach the UK. They were handed over to the Service for Foreigners in Brussels.

Meanwhile, 12 men who smuggled about 150 migrants to the UK between July and November last year have been given sentences of between 30 months and 10 years by a court in Brussels. They were also given fines ranging from €6,000 to €408,000.

The court heard the men had recruited their victims from among the migrants who occupied the impromptu refugee camp in the Maximiliaan park near Brussels North station in the summer of 2015.

The investigation began after six migrants being smuggled in a Polish refrigeration lorry made a call to police when they began to fear they would suffocate. When police arrived at the scene at the Groot-Bijgaarden motorway car park, they found that four of the migrants had the smuggler’s phone number. Further investigation led to the rest of the gang.

Photo Kurt Desplenter/Belga