North Macedonia: Migrants were blackmailed, harassed and beaten with sticks and rods

In the house of the first suspect, where the migrants were kept in inhumane conditions for days, together with him, the police found 12 migrants, including two minors, while a dozen of them escaped immediately before the police action
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Illustration, Photo: Reuters
Illustration, Photo: Reuters
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

Three Pakistanis and one Macedonian citizen were arrested for smuggling migrants, who were humiliated, blackmailed and beaten, announced the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime of North Macedonia.

According to reports, at the end of October and beginning of November, the suspects accepted migrants (who come illegally from Greece) and placed them in the house of the suspected Macedonian citizen in the village of Vaksince near the border with Serbia.

When the migrants tried to leave "the suspected Pakistanis, with the intention of extracting additional money, would treat them with humiliating cruelty".

"They would force the victims to contact relatives who had already gone to Western European countries by phone and ask them to transfer money to the accounts that the suspects would give them. If the money was not sent within a certain time, the victims were harassed and beaten with sticks and rods." , specifies the Prosecution.

In this way, it is added, they also treated two people of Indian origin who became upset and called a friend in Belgrade crying, who they asked to pay 1.300 euros to their account so that they could continue their journey, but he immediately reported it. to the police.

After receiving information from the Serbian police, on the evening of November 1, North Macedonian police officers conducted an operation in the border village of Vaksonce.

In the house of the first suspect, where the migrants were kept in inhumane conditions for days, together with him, the police found 12 migrants, including two minors, while a dozen of them escaped immediately before the police action.

Among the migrants found were three Pakistanis who were "recognized as perpetrators of a criminal act", i.e. people smugglers.

The judge for preliminary proceedings of the Basic Criminal Court in Skopje, at the request of the prosecutor of the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime, ordered three arrested people smugglers to 30 days of detention, and one to house arrest.

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