Migrants were held in pigsty
Police freed 25 people, including a six-month-old baby, yesterday morning from a disused pigsty on the island of Poros in the Saronic Gulf where they were being held to ransom by members of a human trafficking ring, officers said. A 57-year-old man was arrested but a suspect from Iraq and the owner of the farm, who is believed to have been the head of the gang, escaped after firing two shots at police and using the cover of darkness to slip away. The migrants – 23 men from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Thailand, a woman from Sri Lanka and her baby – were being held in a remote spot in the Kalloni area of the island until their relatives paid 5,000-10,000 euros for their release. Officers said the migrants were kept in «squalid» conditions. Police said the migrants had been part of a group of 150 people that the gang smuggled into the country from Turkey last week. The migrants gathered in Istanbul and then they were taken to the eastern Aegean island of Chios before being brought to Poros.
