Early Wednesday morning, four hundred police officers searched more than twenty apartments and offices during a major raid, most of them in Berlin. The police were on the trail of a smuggling gang that is said to have smuggled at least ninety people from Turkey and Iraq to Germany for money.

Friederike Haupt

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Five men were arrested, and eighteen suspects are under investigation. They have German and Turkish citizenship, in one case also Romanian, as a spokesman for the Federal Police of the F.A.Z. said.

Since some of the accused are considered dangerous, special task forces of the Federal Police were also deployed in the raid; but there was no "uncontrolled reaction", the police spokesman said. Above all, the investigators wanted to secure evidence, such as mobile phones, electronic data carriers and lists of names. They are intended to provide information about the activities of the gang, which is said to have smuggled people to Germany mainly via the Balkan route, but also via the Belarus route.

This is believed to have earned large sums of money: In one of the searched apartments alone, the police found 125,000 euros in cash. A migrant has to pay up to 10,000 euros. The police have been investigating members of the gang since 2022.