Human traffickers rake in $3-million by transporting 359 illegal Syrian immigrants

#Humantraffickers #Ezadeen #BlueSkyM #illegalmigrants The Italian Police have found 359 illegal Syrian immigrants crammed into an abandoned cargo ship in the Mediterranean and left to drift to the shores of Italy – and, the human traffickers responsible for this would have raked in $3-million at the rate of between $4000 and $8000 per immigrant.
The ship Ezadeen was towed into the Italian port of Corigliano Calabro after being discovered by coast guards and, majority of those on board appear to be Syrians. This was the second such case involving a freighter this week. Both of these ships had started in Turkey – this was a change in tactics because, earlier, such ships would come from the Libyan route which was usually favored by gangs.
As indicated by the police chief of Cosenza province, Luigi Liguori, each of the migrants had paid between $4,000 and $8,000 to board the ship. The smugglers wore hoods and locked the migrants in the ship's hold before apparently abandoning ship and leaving the scene in a lifeboat.
In the earlier case, Italian coastguards boarded another ship, the Blue Sky M that was carrying 796 migrants and, since it was without a crew, they steered it into the south Italian port of Gallipoli.
The human traffickers are taking advantage of the ongoing unrest and crisis in Syria and such illegal migration for people to seek asylum in Europe, along with economic migrants. As per statistics, last year nearly 3,500 refugees died while attempting to cross the Mediterranean while another 200,000 were rescued.