ATHENS (Reuters) -Greece has dismantled a criminal ring which trafficked dozens of Nepali men, beat them and forced them to work in farms across the country in degrading conditions with little or no payment, police said on Thursday.
Police have charged 17 people, including 10 Pakistani nationals, with participating in the gang which operated at least since November 2024. Another 100 people have been arrested for lacking legal residence permits.
The men were working and living in “unsanitary and degrading conditions”, police said in a statement. The European Union’s law enforcement agency Europol assisted in the operation and will expand the investigation into other countries.
One of the suspected ring members, a 29-year-old Nepali woman, was tasked with advertising the jobs in Greece and Europe and recruiting the men who were working legally in Balkan countries, including Romania, promising better wages and good working conditions.
The gang would confiscate the victims’ identification documents when they arrived in Greece and some were beaten up or kidnapped, if they tried to leave, and forced to pay ransoms for their release.
Police said the men, who lived in temporary shelters or warehouses in central Greece and the southwestern Peloponnese peninsula, worked in harsh conditions, getting very little rest and receiving minimal wages.
A prosecutor is looking into the case.
(Reporting by Yannis Souliotis and Renee Maltezou, editing by Ed Osmond)
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