THE HAGUE (Reuters) – European police made more than 1,000 arrests in a 10-day, continent-wide sweep against organised crime this month that netted suspected people traffickers and cocaine smugglers, law enforcement officials said yesterday.
The operation was carried out in towns, airports and harbours and involved thousands of policemen from all 28 countries of the European Union and six non-European countries.
Police identified 200 victims of human trafficking and saved 30 Romanian minors from trafficking. Some faced forced worked in prostitution or begging gangs, Europol, Europe’s police organisation, said.
“It’s the single largest coordinated assault on organised crime ever seen in Europe,” Rob Wainwright, the head of Europol, told a news conference at the organisation’s headquarters.
He said the operation was made necessary by the increasing sophistication and interconnectedness of Europe’s crime groups, many of whom were using the hard-to-monitor “dark net” – or encrypted internet – to communicate with each other.