A 48-year-old man convicted of smuggling almost 100 migrants into Germany received a prison sentence of ten and a half years on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for the regional court in Traunstein in Bavaria, southern Germany, told the press that a 48-year-old Iraqi, who had been living in Pforzheim, had been found guilty of smuggling migrants from abroad, as well as taking at least one of them hostage, according to the local newspaper Traunsteiner Tagblatt. His guilty sentence was passed last Wednesday and this Tuesday (January 13) the actual prison time was outlined.
During the court case, reported the French press agency Agence France Presse (AFP), the man was accused of having been part of a smuggling gang that operated between August and November 2023, which was linked to smugglers in Hungary and Slovakia. The gang is accused of having taken mostly Syrian migrants across Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and into Germany and other Western European nations.
Lead judge Christina Braune called many witnesses to the stand, according to the Traunsteiner Tagblatt. According to another local news source, the Passauer Neue Presse (PNP), some of the witnesses called in the trial are believed to have acted as part of the gang, and had already received several years of prison sentencing themselves. Among those tried alongside the Iraqi smuggler, reported PNP were three men and a woman, who are believed to have acted as scouts and drivers for the smuggling operation.
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Endangering life
The court case found that many of the migrants smuggled in via this gang had to stand without any kind of safety precautions in the goods area of the vans they were traveling in. Prosecutors said the man had accepted the risk that some of them might be severely injured or even die while being transported by him.
Prosecutors said that the man would pick up the migrants in a goods vehicle and drive them over the border into Germany. On one of these occasions, the vehicle was chased by the police and the migrants had to continue on foot over the border.
During the time the man was operating the smuggling gang, police believe he successfully managed to bring 95 migrants over the border to Germany. In a further case against the suspect, the convicted smuggler is accused of having ordered the hostage taking of a man in 2023, who allegedly owed 400,000 euros to the suspect. The family of the man was reportedly ready to pay 20 percent (80,000 euros) for his release, reported PNP. The 48-year-old ordered the man to be released, but in the end, the money promised was not paid. This, added PNP acted in the suspect's favor when sentencing was considered.
Prosecutors tried to get the man put in prison for 14 years. His defense lawyers said he should serve a sentence of four years. The judge finally decided on ten and a half.
The 'Traunstein model'
According to a press statement from the state prosecutor’s office in Traunstein for a similar case of smuggling in 2024, judges and prosecutors seek to apply what they have termed the "Traunstein model" to sentencing.
The 'Traunstein Model' was created in 2018 to try and fight smuggling attempts and organized crime. Over the years since then, it has been adopted by most courts across Bavaria. The model involves specialist teams from across Bavaria, as well as cooperating with foreign police forces to crack the smuggling gangs and investigate other areas they might be active in, like drugs and weapons dealing. Police in Bavaria also cooperate with Eurojust and Europol to make sure that international investigations are properly coordinated and that not just the front men are captured in a gang but also those who stand behind them.
In a similar case in December 2024, a 32-year-old Turkish national was sentenced to ten years and six months in prison, as well as ordered to pay a fine of 54,000 euros for 11 cases of smuggling. Eight of these 11 cases, declared prosecutors, involved migrants smuggled and put in danger as they were transported across borders.
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Cracking smuggling networks
In November last year, prosecutors in Traunstein also brought a case against four smugglers who they believe to have been part of the Al-Sarawi network of smugglers, bringing migrants from Syria to Germany.
One of the leading members of the group was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Two of the people who worked for this man, who was born in Syria but had been living in northern Germany, were also sentenced to years-long prison sentences.
Similar to the other cases, this group was also judged to have put migrants in mortal danger during their smuggling operations. In fact, in one of the smuggling operations, there were fatalities.
According to prosecutors, one of the heads of the gang had also attempted to take out a contract to kill his ex-wife and her current partner, as well as his father-in-law in Syria, although he was arrested before these could be carried out.
Investigators in that case believe that the Al-Sarawi Network is responsible for smuggling a large part of the Syrians who traveled the Balkan route towards Western Europe, reported the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
In one of the smuggling operations, on the border between Belarus and Latvia, two sisters reportedly died. One died in a Latvian clinic and the other after being pushed back from Latvia in a forest in Belarus, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung. However, only one of the deaths was used in the case against the smuggler.
The gang is said to have earned several thousand euros per person to smuggle them from Syria to Europe.
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