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NICOSIA, Cyprus — Cyprus police have arrested 5 Syrians on suspicion of individuals trafficking after a police patrol boat plucked them and 32 of their countrymen from the ocean when their rickety boats sank near the island’s southeastern tip.
Police say the 5 males aged 46-53 face quite a few prices together with serving to third-country residents to illegally enter Cyprus for monetary acquire and transporting folks on unsafe craft.
Police spokesman Christos Andreou advised state-run Cyprus Information Company that the 37 Syrians — who included seven minors — had been collected from the ocean early Thursday.
Andreou mentioned the 5 had been positioned underneath arrest after witnesses mentioned they had been answerable for their transport to Cyprus. One of many 5 had beforehand been deported from the east Mediterranean island nation.
Migrant arrivals to Cyprus from Syria and elsewhere to hunt asylum proceed in giant numbers, principally by the ethnically divided island nation’s breakaway Turkish Cypriot north.
European Union member Cyprus says the variety of asylum-seekers within the first half of this yr amounted to 12,000 — equal to the quantity for all of final yr. It says asylum-seekers make up an EU excessive of 5% of the island’s 915,000 folks within the internationally acknowledged south.
Cypriot regulation enforcement authorities have been stepping up arrests referring to folks trafficking.
Based on police statistics, 50 folks have been arrested in Cyprus on folks trafficking prices in 30 separate instances by the primary seven months of this yr, about equaling the tallies for all of 2021.
Thus far this yr, 3,459 migrants who had their asylum functions rejected by Cyprus have both been deported or voluntarily repatriated. This yr, 4 folks have been sentenced to between three and 10 months in jail for helping within the unlawful entry of others.
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