04.03.24 – Police arrest seven members of organised crime group. During an investigation spanning from December 2023 to January 2024, the drug division of the judicial police pursued an inquiry into a drug-dealing group. According to the police, the group, comprising seven individuals, predominantly operated within the Gare neighbourhood in Luxembourg City. The seven alleged drug traffickers have been detained in custody on the orders of the public prosecutor’s office.
05.03.24 – Cameroon’s Douala port keeps organised crime afloat through massive access to illicit global markets. In May 2023, a customs official in Douala, Cameroon stamped a shipment of timber for export from the Central African Republic (CAR) to China. It seemed like a routine load, an everyday part of international trade.But the company exporting the logs — Wood International Group — is part of a network of concerns in Africa operated by the Wagner Group, the notorious Russian private military enterprise. The United States placed Wood International Group under sanctions last September.
08.03.24 – Almost 5 000 false identity documents seized in Greece. The Aliens Division of Attica within the Hellenic Police (Ellinikí Astynomía), supported by Europol, targeted a criminal network involved in document fraud and migrant smuggling activities. The criminal network, based in Athens, produced high-quality falsified travel and identification documents, which were used to enable irregular migrants to travel illegally across the EU and legalise their stay in their final destination country. The investigation led to four action days between September 2023 and February 2024. More than 50 connected cases of smuggling by air have been investigated.
08.03.24 – 19 smugglers arrested in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. A large-scale investigation under Europol’s Operational Task Force (OTF), involving law enforcement and judicial authorities from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia with the informational support from Germany, has led to the dismantling of migrant smuggling networks active across the so-called Balkan route. The more than a year-long investigation into this criminal network led to two action days on 24 January and 6 February.
08.03.24 – At least 287 school children kidnapped by armed gunmen in northwest Nigeria. At least 287 school children, some as young as eight years old, are being held by gunmen who raided their school in Nigeria’s northwestern Kaduna State early Thursday, a police spokesperson told CNN Friday. More than 300 students were taken early Thursday by the armed bandits on motorcycles who stormed the LEA Primary and Secondary School in the Kuriga village of Kaduna’s Chikun district, the state’s police spokesman Mansur Hassan said. Some of the students were rescued but 287 of them remain with the kidnappers, Hassan said.
