Poland has dismantled an alleged migrant trafficking network at the Polish-Belarusian border which was suspected of providing millions of dollars in funding to armed groups such as Hezbollah, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Thirty-six Polish, Ukrainian, Iraqi and Belarusian members of the alleged network have so far been charged, they added.
“The process consisted of organising the illegal migration of Iraqis, Syrians and Palestinians via the Polish-Belarusian border towards the German border,” prosecutors said.
Prosecutors identified two alleged leaders of the network—Syrian Ahmad R. who resides in Germany, and Mohammed A., known as Abu Josef—as part of a joint investigation.
Ahmad R., known as Abu Noh, was arrested on April 23, according to Polish prosecutors.
The probe was led by the EU’s criminal justice agency Eurojust, with German and Dutch police support.
The two leaders are also alleged to have been involved in smuggling Yemeni, Syrian and Iranian migrants via the Balkans.
Investigators are examining crypto-currency flows through accounts controlled by the group leaders, totalling $581 million.
They found transfers worth at least $30 million to accounts linked to Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestinian jihadist groups, and more than $13 million to a site subject to US sanctions, according to Polish prosecutors.
In January, the Polish border guard revealed that it had detected over twice as many migrants on the Belarus-Poland border in the first eight-and-a-half months of 2023 as in the same period of 2022. Most had come from the Middle East.
EU member states have accused Belarus, along with Russia, of weaponising migration by flying migrants into Belarus and helping them cross the EU’s borders. Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania have all erected fences at their borders with Belarus to prevent the crossings.
