TRIESTE – Beatings of migrants guilty of being too tired to walk, sleeping pills for children to put them to sleep without running the risk of being discovered because of their crying, all to earn mountains of money on the skin of people coming from the Balkan route and heading to Italy. The Albanian cell beheaded by the District Anti-Mafia Directorate of Trieste thanks to the operation carried out by the flying squad of the Julian capital and the collaboration of the Capodistria police station, had set up a business with enormous revenues. We are talking about 32 episodes documented by the investigators, but in the words of the deputy prosecutor Massimo De Bortoli who coordinated the activity, there were certainly “more”. The investigation, according to the prosecutor’s office, could also expand, or take a different turn. “Someone might think they are speaking,” said chief prosecutor Antonio De Nicolo, leaving room for the emergence of the phenomenon of human trafficking repentants. Maybe.
A million dollar business
Beyond the hypotheses, the operation represents another important blow against organized crime that operates along the Balkan route and benefits from the trafficking of human beings. A turnover that can be defined as a millionaire, considering that passages from Slovenia to Italy (for around twenty kilometres), cost between 200 and 250 euros each. The investigation lasted 11 months (starting at the beginning of 2022), but it is very probable that the gang was operating even before the start of the police activity. The money was not delivered by the migrants to the traffickers, but the other links in the chain would have paid for the trips. “A Pandora’s box” the investigators defined it. The gang “did not expect to be discovered” and over the months it has been “nailed” by passages documented over and over again, both thanks to the camera traps positioned here and there along the area under investigation, and thanks to wiretaps and tailings.
“As if Nothing Happened”
Yet, the gang seemed to continue to carry out the “service” as if nothing had happened. The boss, as reported by the deputy prosecutor Massimo De Bortoli who defined him as a “top manager”, is called Fitim Miftaraj known as “Fiti”. Over 30 suspects, 13 arrests, numerous precautionary measures issued after 11 months of investigations and 290 pages of the ordinance. But how did the band of traffickers move?
Journeys from Trieste to Pomjan
They went back and forth, even making two trips a night, aboard vans, Range Rovers, BMWs, all fast, large-engined cars. Cars that were seized by the prosecutor (along with cell phones, sims and sim cards), but which the suspects proudly and fearlessly displayed on their social profiles. “A large fleet of cars”, so the police station. In many cases, part of the journeys to Slovenia (it is not known whether “those” journeys or others, not necessarily related to human trafficking) were immortalized in short videos, then published on Tik Tok, Facebook and in stories of Instagram. Photos, comments, encouragements from other people, sometimes family members, all with a more or less profound bond with Trieste.
The photos, the videos, the “normal” life of the band
There are photos of them in Barcola, but also in different areas of the city. Perhaps the same areas of Trieste where they unloaded the migrants they were picking up, on the border between Slovenia and Croatia, near the town of Pomjan. Or perhaps the same areas were the scene of some attempts to settle scores, once some member of the criminal association (this too disputed among the hypotheses of crime) thought of setting up on his own. “Cross bars, sticks and baseball bats, in the middle of the night” which without the intervention of the police would have turned into real bloodbaths. Not so different (in intentions, fortunately not in practice) from what was implemented by the two bands of Kosovars who in recent years had been responsible for some very serious news events, the escalation of which culminated in the shooting in via Carducci. Young and old, ended up in prison on heavy charges and until yesterday, sitting quietly at some table in Piazza Goldoni or in Campo San Giacomo. As if nothing had happened, as if nothing could touch their power.
2023-06-28 16:50:17
#double #life #Albanian #cell
