Authorities Of Iraqi Kurdistan Arrest 10 People For Smuggling Migrants To Europe

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th November, 2021) The authorities of Iraqi Kurdistan arrested 10 people for smuggling migrants to Europe, Jutiyar Adel, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government, said on Thursday.

"The government of Kurdistan will not allow a repetition of such cases, deception of citizens and smuggling them to these regions. The authorities of the Kurdistan region have detained 10 smugglers so far," Adel said at a press conference as quoted by the Kurdish broadcaster Rudaw.

On Thursday, a plane with Iraqi migrants intending to return to their homeland departed from the Belarusian capital of Minsk. The plane first made a stop at Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan and then landed in the capital of Iraq, Baghdad. A spokesman for the Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority, Jihad Kazem, said that there were 430 migrants on board. About 390 of them disembarked in Erbil.

Last week, over 2,000 undocumented refugees, mostly Iraqi Kurds, gathered just inside Belarus on the border with Poland. They camped near the Bruzgi checkpoint in the Grodno region. Poland refused to let them through.

Since July, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland have reported an increase in the number of illegal migrant crossing from neighboring Belarus. They accused Minsk of using the migration crisis as revenge on the European Union for sanctions that it imposed earlier this year on Belarusian officials over alleged violations of human rights. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that his country no longer has the capacity to prevent the movement of migrants toward the EU due to sanctions.