Niger Republic has confirmed the arrest of a Libyan suspected of smuggling thousands of migrants through the Sahel country towards Europe following a joint probe with the French and Spanish authorities, French police confirmed on Saturday morning.
Africa Today News, New York reports that the 29-year-old, who was detained on December 20 in the Nigerien city of Agadez, told investigators he had overseen the departure of ’60 migrants per week for seven years’, said Jean-Christophe Hilaire of the International Security Cooperation Directorate (DCIS) at the French interior ministry.
Pick-up trucks had driven the migrants — most from Nigeria or Cameroon — to the border with Algeria or war-torn Libya for a fee of 1,500 to 2,000 euros ($1,600 to 2,100), he said.
The suspect is now being held in the capital Niamey, Hilaire said.
The EU-funded operation had been carried out with the help of three French and three Spanish policemen.
Many West African migrants try to reach Libya in the hope of making it across the Mediterranean to a better life in Europe.
They typically flock to the Nigerien city of Agadez, where smugglers offer to take them onwards to the Libyan border.
The government in Niamey adopted a law in 2015 to make migrant smuggling a crime, with sentences of up to 30 years in prison.
But a Nigerien security source has said the measure had only pushed smugglers to use “new, more dangerous routes”.
European policemen have been present in Niger since 2017. Since then, 824 people have been arrested, the French interior ministry says.
Meanwhile, this is coming less than a week after the Nigeria Immigration Service in Ogun State has announced the interception of no fewer than 33 illegal migrants from two locations in the Odeda Local Government Area of the state.
The state Controller of Immigration, Yakubu Jibrin while parading the suspects at the command’s office along the Presidential Boulverd in the state capital, asserted that the suspects are without valid travel documents and no means of livelihood.
While asking members of the general public to be more vigilant, especially in face of the current security situation in the country, he, however, promised that the suspects are to be repatriated back to their countries of origin after due consultations with their countries.