ROME, January 2: Mostaff left his wife and children behind in Turkey to undertake a six-day voyage across the Adriatic to Italy, from where he hoped to travel to the lower Saxony town of Oldenburg.The 35-year-old Kurd later told Italian journalists that he paid around 3,500 dollars for the trip to Italy, adding that he hoped to find work in Oldenburg and, if all went well, to have his family join him there later. Little did he know that he was being taken for a ride.
Mostaff's is not a lone case. His ship, `The Ararat', was carrying a human cargo of 800 Kurds when it landed in Italy at the end of December.
The stream of refugees crossing the Adriatic has not abated for months. Behind the tribulations of the refugees and illegal migrants is a web of organised crime, allegedly run by the Italian, Albanian and Turkish Mafia. Newspapers in Rome have revealed that the Italian and the Turkish Mafia have entered into a pact to secure handsome profits from the lucrative business of refugee misery.
The
shipping of Kurds across the stormy waters of the Adriatic, which is part of the trade in people, goes hand in hand with the trade in drugs and arms. The authorities appear helpless to stop it. The Kalashnikov rifles is one of the hot commodities of trade, in addition to Albanian girls sold into the flesh trade.
This trade in human misfortune has surged since the end of October, when Italy signed the Schengen Agreement allowing unhindered travel across internal European borders to France and Germany.
The profit margins for organised crime are huge. On the basis of an average ``ticket'' costing up to 3,500 dollars, the organisers stood to make around three million dollars from `The Ararat's' voyage.
Nobody knows just how many Kurds have crossed the Adriatic in this way, but the Roman newspaper, Il Messaggero, estimates around 20,000 have made the journey, with thousands more waiting on the Turkish coast.
It has also been disclosed that national anti-Mafia state prosecutor Alberto Maritati tracked down
an entire network of cooperation between the Italian, Albanian and Turkish Mafia in recent investigations in Tirana. ``Until now their game has proceeded unhindered,'' the Roman newspaper La Republica says.
The Albanian clans organise transfers in small motor boats, while the Turkish Mafia controls the mass transports, it reports, adding that the Calabrian Mafia is responsible for the Italian side. The motor boats apparently pick up arms for the Italian and international markets along the Albanian coast, where Kalashnikov assault rifles are plentiful following the civil war disturbances in the spring.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
