Police intercept truck crammed with migrants
Two suspected people traffickers, one from Iraq and one from Iran, were in police detention yesterday after officers found 49 undocumented Iraqi migrants crammed into the back of a truck, including children aged between 2 and 11.
The migrants were spotted being bundled into the truck in Haidari, western Attica, by an off-duty officer, who alerted the authorities.
Police said the migrants had been “squeezed in in dangerous and suffocating conditions.”
It transpired that each migrant had paid between 4,000 and 6,000 euros to the traffickers to smuggle them over the Greek-Turkish land border and transport them to Thessaloniki, then Athens.
On Sunday, the migrants had taken taxis from Omonia to Haidari, where the truck was waiting for them. The traffickers had planned to take them to the west coast where a boat was to take them to Italy, sources said.
