Police on Friday arrested an Iraqi Kurd on suspicion of heading a human-trafficking ring ferrying would-be immigrants through Italy to Germany during the last two years.
Police officers detained Hassan Anwar, 32, an Iraqi national of Kurdish origin, at a house in Ventimiglia on the French border after the arrest in April of four Iraqi smugglers in Trento near the Austrian border.
The four had been trying to smuggle 30 illegal Kurdish immigrants across the border in a small bus.
Investigators located Anwar through cellular telephone calls he made with the smugglers.
Anwar's main base was in Rome but he had been overseeing trafficking operations near the French border for the last couple of months.
Police said illegal immigrants were asked between six million and eight million lire (between 4,000 euros and 4,130 euros, 3,720 dollars and 3,840 dollars), to be paid into a bank account in Leipzig, Germany.
The profits for the ring, who transported the immigrants from Iraq to Italy's southern Apulia region and then on to the northern border and to Germany in sealed trucks, was estimated at about 500 million lire - ROME (AFP)
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