BRUSSELS: European law-enforcement officials say they are tracking at least 65,000 migrant smugglers, twice as many as at the height of the migration crisis three years ago, as the illegal trade booms.

Despite a drop in the number of migrants successfully crossing the Mediterranean since Europe’s biggest migration crisis since World War II erupted in 2015, the EU’s police agency Europol said dem­a­nd for smugglers was still “huge”.

Many new suspects have also been identified, Europol added, as investigators in European count­ries track one of the fastest growing forms of international organised crime.

“At the end of last year we had 65,000 smugglers in our data ba­­ses,” Robert Crepinko, head of Euro­­­­pol’s European Migrant Smug­g­­ling Centre, said at his offices in The Hague.

Europol reported in September 2015 there were some 30,000 suspected smugglers before the number jumped to nearly 55,000 by the end of 2016, then some 10,000 more in 2017.

Sixty-three per cent of those whose nationalities it has identified are from Europe, including 45pc from Balkan countries, according to Europol figures.

Fourteen per cent are from the Middle East, 13pc from Africa, nine per cent from eastern Asia and one per cent from the Americas.

Crepinko said smuggling is “still a booming business” worth billions of euros despite a drop in migrant arrivals last year following EU co­­operation deals with Turkey and Libya, the main gateways to Europe.

Libya is currently the main migrant springboard to Europe where reports of enslavement on top of other horrific abuses of sub-Saharan Africans prompted urgent action at an EU-Africa summit in Abidjan in November.

Thousands of migrants were quickly repatriated from Libya to their home countries under a deal reached at the meeting.

French President Emmanuel Mac­­­­­ron also announced the two sides would share more intelligence to “dismantle the networks and their financing and detain traffickers.”

But Crepinko said further law-enforcement cooperation depends on obtaining guarantees that human rights will be respected, a challenge when dealing with many African governments.

“That’s why there will be no quick wins in that,” the Europol official said.

Since last year, Europol has been operating on a new legal basis that restricts information it can share with non-EU countries. But the age­n­­­­cy cited recent successes in cooperation including the break-up of a gang sending young Nigerian wom­en to Spanish cities for prostitution.

Italy, the EU’s main migrant entry point, agreed in December to set up a crime-fighting cell with Libya’s western-backed government in Tripoli.

Libya then announced last mon­th arrest warrants for 205 people including members of the Libyan security services and embassy officials from African countries based in Libya over people-smuggling.

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2018