SERBIA: Serbian border police struggle, as number of illegal immigrants and refugees from countries like Syria, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, who cross into Serbia from Macedonia and Kosovo, grows .

Record ID: 348606

  • Title: SERBIA: Serbian border police struggle, as number of illegal immigrants and refugees from countries like Syria, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, who cross into Serbia from Macedonia and Kosovo, grows .
  • Date: 25th July 2013
  • Summary: PRESEVO, SERBIA (RECENT - JULY 17, 2013) (REUTERS) PRESEVO VALLEY MIRATOVAC, SERBIA (RECENT - JULY 17, 2013) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF MOSQUE POLICEMEN WALKING IN FRONT OF POLICE STATION POLICEMEN TALKING PRESEVO VALLEY/SERBIA-MACEDONIA BORDER (RECENT - JULY 17, 2013) (REUTERS) PRESEVO VALLEY BY NIGHT POLICEMEN INSIDE VEHICLE WITH THERMAL VISION SCREEN WITH THERMAL VISION P
  • Embargoed: 9th August 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Serbia
  • Country: Serbia
  • Topics: Crime,International Relations,People
  • Reuters ID: LVA2UV1BD4GO9QW10NS71A0A92CW
  • Story Text: Serbian border police, aided by thermal-vision equipment, detained a group of Syrian refugees, who had crossed into the country via the Presevo border crossing with Macedonia.
    One of the detained, a Syrian man coming from the war-torn city of Aleppo, said his group, which included several children, had left a refugee camp in Turkey in April and had made the long trek to Serbia via Greece and Macedonia.
    Macedonia and Serbia both lie on the so-called trans-Asian corridor, which runs from the Middle East to Europe via Turkey. Many from the Arabian Peninsula, North and Eastern Africa, as well as from Asian countries such as Myanmar and Bangladesh, join this route on their way to the EU.
    Serbian police tracks refugees for miles deep into the country. However, unstaffed and ill-equipped, they have been struggling to patrol the country's more than 2000 kilometre-long border.
    Thousands in fact, including suspected Islamic militants, pass every year through the Serbia-Macedonia Presevo border crossing and the numbers are on the rise, said Sinisa Arsic, a police inspector for combating illegal immigration and human trafficking.
    "Well, they (immigrant) are mainly poor people, from lower social status, in the most cases, it's economic migration, but there could also be some members of terrorist organisations, such as al Qaeda. Our estimates are that 4-5 percent of them (illegal immigrants) have had some sort of training, or had some battle experience," Arsic said.
    "On average, 30 people try to illegally cross the border every day. Sometimes it goes up to 50. The number of people from Syria is rising, and the number of people from Afghanistan is going down," said Border Police Lieutenant Colonel, Sasa Djordjevic.
    A routine border police patrol detained a group of men from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, found on the hills near the Macedonian and Serbian border.
    Serbian, ethnic Albanian and Macedonian traffickers are charging 150 euros per person to guide immigrants across the border. Once they cross to Serbia the price is 500 euros for a 500 kilometres drive to the Hungarian border in the north.
    In 2012, Serbian border police prevented 14.958 attempts to cross into the country illegally. The biggest number of illegal entries were from Macedonia.
    In the first six months of 2013 more than 5.000 illegal border crossings were recorded.
    According to latest Serbian border police figures, more and more illegal attempts to cross into Serbia have been recorded.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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