Hundreds of Bangladeshi migrants are being smuggled on charter flights to Libya where they board boats to reach Europe, according to intelligence seen by the Malta Organization today.
Criminal groups charge €1,500 per migrant for transportation between Damascus in Syria and Benghazi in Libya, using flights operated by the Syrian company Cham Wings.
An “administrative fee” of €500 is also charged, which is likely the money that criminal organizations extract from each person trafficked.
In Libya, the migrants are then transferred to boats that embark on the perilous journey across the Mediterranean in an attempt to reach Italy.
Migrants are given airline tickets at the airport and can only be purchased with cash from a designated travel agency. Intelligence indicates that smugglers take migrants’ passports and book flights on their behalf.
The information comes from intelligence gathered by Frontex, the European border agency, and Italian and Maltese police interrogation sessions with the rescued migrants.
A report detailing this smuggling network was submitted to the European Commission and made available to EU Home Affairs Ministers last year.
Over the past year, eyebrows have been raised at the sheer number of Bengali migrants trying to cross from Libya to Italy in boats, often ending up in difficulty.
On March 12, due to bad weather, a boat capsized about 177 kilometers northwest of Benghazi with 47 people on board.
In the accident, 30 people were missing and 17 people were rescued by the Italian Coast Guard after an initial attempt to scuttle a merchant ship failed due to bad weather.
Information indicates that the majority of the people on board the ship were Bangladeshis. The incident prompted Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri to take the issue to parliament three days later. Camilleri talked about the charter flights operated by Cham Wings without giving many details. He also told the House of Representatives that Malta had written to the European Commission to take action against the airline, which was facilitating people smuggling.
Sham Wings
Cham Wings is owned by Syrian businessman Issam Shammout. The airline is part of his family’s company, Shammout Group, which is active in the automotive, steel, aviation, shipping, construction and real estate sectors.
On July 20 last year, the European Union lifted sanctions against Cham Wings, after the company was blacklisted in December 2021 for its role in transporting migrants seeking illegal transit to Poland from Belarus that summer.
However, a day later, the European Union put Shammout on its sanctions list, describing him as a “leading businessman operating in Syria”.
Shammout appealed the sanctions against him to the European Court of Justice.
Cham Wings, which does not operate in EU countries, is still subject to US sanctions and pressure is building within the EU to follow suit.
A trip to Benghazi and the police notebook
Benghazi in eastern Libya is the only entry point by air for criminal networks that adopt this method of transporting migrants.
Eastern Libya is run by the House of Representatives, a parliament not recognized by the international community, and General Khalifa Haftar and his forces.
Intelligence indicates that the air link to Benghazi is also used for Syrian nationals, although the two nationalities are smuggled separately. Due to the nature of the flights, the migrants are not assigned seats and according to the information gathered from the rescued people, the behavior of the crew on board is not kind towards the passengers.
Once landing in Benghazi, there are no proper border control checks. Libyan officers check passports and record names in a “notebook”. The migrants are then handed over to their smuggler, who takes them to the safe house.
Some attempt the perilous sea crossing from the eastern shores of Libya, while others are taken to the western Libyan coast for the shorter but no less dangerous sea voyage to Lampedusa.
Sources familiar with the smuggling network told Malta today that once in Libya, Bangladeshis and Syrians pay higher rates than other nationalities.
They said, “This leads criminal groups to prefer Bangladeshi and Syrian immigrants over other nationalities in the Libyan corridor.”
Source: Malta Today newspaper
