Elderly women, involved in smuggling activities, rounded up by Gendarmerie elements in western Algeria

Echorouk's reporters sent on an assignment mission to the west of Algeria witnessed the arrest this week of five elderly women involved in smuggling activities by elements of the National Gendarmerie near the city of Sidi Bel Abbes. These arrested old women are aged between 65 and 73.

• They were rounded up on Sunday afternoon at a security check-point set up by Gendarmerie forces on national road 13 near the small locality of Bourtoukala.
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• The Gendarmes proceeded to the search of a traveling bus coming from the city of Sidi Bel Abbes and heading to Oran and Relizane in western Algeria.
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• During this search operation, 50 pieces of copper, 286 pairs of shoes of various types and a large quantity of clothes were seized.
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• These goods were introduced illegally on the national territory through the Algerian – Moroccan border, according to a Gendarmerie officer.
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• These hapless elderly women namely Kheira, Fatima, Fatiha, Mimouna and Hafidha are smugglers who have been exploited by the insidious mafia of contraband and trafficking operating in the western part of Algeria.
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• They got involved in this illegal activity in order to earn some money to feed their needy families who live in dire poverty, they lamented.
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• They told Echorouk’s reporters that their very precarious social situation had brought them to get involved in this smuggling activity so as to save their children from starvation as most of them have lost their husbands either on account of road accidents or disease.
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• They said that they had been engaged in such illegal business for several years now by conveying their smuggled goods between Sidi Bel Abbes and Oran where they are sold to shop owners there in return for some profit-taking.
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• They also indicated that the goods had been smuggled into Algeria through the Moroccan – Algerian border and transited from the so-called Zaouia flea market near the border at night before being collected and dispatched to retail stores in the cities of Oran and Algiers.
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• These unfortunate elderly women implored the Gendarmes to set them free arguing that they were just the victims of a mafia ring which is behind this smuggling business in western Algeria.
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• They also said that this underground mafia network had been exploiting their pressing needs, their utter misery and their gullibility to throw them into such illegal activities.
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