Algerian Security Services Arrest Moroccans For Smuggling Migrants to Europe
The Central Office for Combating Organized Crime (SCLCO) arrested, this week, two Moroccans leading an international criminal network for smuggling migrants to Europe.
The Algerian police services stated that “the Central Office for Combating Organized Crime disbands a cross-border criminal network that is led by two Moroccans specializing in organizing secret trips and smuggling people from the western borders of the country towards Europe.”
The statement added that “the organized criminal activity of this network was put to an end, its criminal plans were thwarted, and 12 people were arrested. Among them, a woman, after intelligence work supported by extensive field investigations initiated by National Security investigators.”
“Sums of money were seized and recovered in the national and hard currencies, as well as luxury tourist vehicles, and other cars that were used as a means of transportation to carry out their criminal acts,” the police services statement added.
The same statement revealed that the suspects were brought before “the Public Prosecutor of the Anti-Terrorism and Organized Crime Department at the Algiers Specialized Criminal Pole of the Sidi M’hamed Court on charges of forming an organized criminal network across national borders, to commit the felony of smuggling migrants in exchange for obtaining financial and material benefits, the misdemeanour of money laundering, and the violation of currency exchange and capital movement to and from abroad.”
