STA, 24 October 2019 - Slovenian police have busted a ring that made an estimated EUR 1.3 million in illegal gain by smuggling Chinese nationals to Italy through Slovenia. Of the four Slovenians and eight Chinese operating the ring, three are in detention and two in house arrest, Maribor police said on Thursday.

One of the detained suspects is a Slovenian citizen and the others are Chinese with permanent residence in Slovenia.

The members of the ring are suspected of helping at least 143 Chinese enter Slovenia illegally through Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia over the past year and a half, Maribor's criminal police chief Beno Meglič said at today's news conference.

To get illegally from China to Italy, a Chinese citizen had to pay from EUR 9,000 to EUR 14,000, the police officer said.

The smuggled persons had been lured to Italy in China and transported to Europe, chiefly Moscow, by plane.

The route then ran to Serbia's Belgrade, from where they were taken on to Croatia or to Bosnia, and from there to Slovenia, Italy's eastern neighbour.

The Chinese entered Slovenia in the north-east of the country, in the area near the city of Ptuj.

Taxi services were used to transport them from Ptuj to the Italian border or to Italy, with four of the suspects posing as taxi drivers.

As many as five of Slovenia's eight police departments took part in the investigation, which lasted a year and a half and ended on 16 October.

The police also seized some EUR 39,000 in cash, passports and several electronic devices.

Under the Slovenian penal code, the crime of smuggling people illegally across the state border carries a prison sentence of one to eight years, and a fine.

STA, 21 October 2019 - An international police investigation into trafficking in illegal migrants has concluded with criminal complaints filed against 10 persons, including four Slovenians. They are charged with at least 24 cases of transportation of illegal migrants across the border.

The investigation into the trafficking of migrants to the EU through the Balkan countries, which has been taking place since April, has been conducted by the police forces of Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Europol.

Their representatives offered some fresh statistics on illegal migration to the EU as they presented the operation at a press conference in Koper on Monday.

Uroš Lavrič of the General Police Administration said that the Slovenian police had detected an increased number of criminal gangs which organised trafficking in illegal migrants.

One of the cases which prompted the international police cooperation was a wild pursuit of a Slovenian who was transporting three Iraqis in his car, and who was stopped by the Italian border police only in Trieste.

Dejan Jurič, the head of the Koper police department, said that at least ten persons had participated in the criminal gang, and that it was headed by a 28-year-old Slovenian from the Piran area.

According to him, sufficient evidence has been collected to prove at least 150 illegal crossings of the border by citizens of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Eritrea and Afghanistan.

Criminal complaints have been written for a total of 24 criminal acts of illegal crossing of the border, with one criminal act related to illicit drugs and one criminal act of illegal production and trafficking in arms.

A total of 150 migrants who have crossed the Slovenian border illegally have been apprehended, and seven of the suspects have been detained.

The migrants most frequently crossed the border in the area of the border crossings of Dragonja and Jelšane in the south-west and in Babno Polje in the south.

The smugglers charged them between EUR 1,500 and EUR 3,000 for the transportation from Serbia to Italy. Had the operation succeeded, the criminal gang would have earned up to EUR 450,000 said Jurič.

Lavrič pointed to the "uncompromising behaviour of the smugglers" lately, as they were endangering migrants with reckless driving, driving under the influence of alcohol or by putting a large number of migrants in vehicles.

In the last 30 days alone as many as six cases were recorded of a smuggler transporting between 24 and 38 foreigners in a single vehicle, he added.

The statistics shows that the number of related criminal acts processed by the Slovenian police this year is up by 71% compared to the same period last year (365 to 213).

The number of related criminal acts committed as part of a criminal ring increased almost seven-fold, and the number of cases of trafficking in illegal migrants for material gain increased by 59% (from 132 to 210).

According to Lavrič, last year the Slovenian police apprehended 218 persons who were transporting illegal migrants across the border in a total of 153 cases.

Until 18 October this year, there were a total of 260 such cases, an increase of 132% compared to the same period last year (112).

So far a total of 379 smugglers of illegal migrants have been apprehended, including 37 Slovenian citizens, and 312 of them ended in detention. They were transporting a total of 2,246 illegal migrants.

Svevlad Hoffmann, the chief inspector of the border police of Bosnia-Herzegovina, said that the criminal gang had been well organised, transporting around 350 illegal migrants across the Bosnian border.

He expressed the hope that the EU would recognise the effort and provide the Bosnian police with staffing, material and technical assistance so that it could be equipped comparably to border police forces in the west.

Gabor Stankovič of the European Migrant Smuggling Centre noted that the Balkan migration route was still a "hot potato" for the EU, adding that "migrations are not a problem of one country, but the entire EU."

Stankovič noted that Bosnia-Herzegovina was facing enormous migration pressure, adding that at least half of the smuggling cases reported to Europol came from the Western Balkans.

STA, 16 October 2019 - The Slovenian police recorded a drop in illegal migration in September, however the number of illegal border crossings in the first nine months of the year is still 70.5% above last year's figure.

Since the beginning of the year, police handled 11,786 cases of people crossing into the country illegally, which compares to 6,911 in the first nine months of last year.

More than 3,000 of them were from Pakistan, with roughly 1,600 from Algeria and 1,300 from Afghanistan, data from the police show.

The number of migrants seeking asylum has been increasing as well. As many as 3,856 asked for international protection in the eight months to the end of August, which is more than in the whole 2018.

After being accommodated in asylum centres, the migrants often continue on their way to their chosen destination countries. Most of those are citizens of Algeria.

The number of third-country citizens turned away at the border rose by almost 14% year-on-year to 3,397 in the first nine months of the year. Most of these were denied entry at the border with Croatia.

Slovenia returned a total of 8,050 illegal migrants to foreign law enforcement authorities in the first nine months of the year, most of them (7,956) to Croatia.

In the same period, 491 were returned to Slovenian authorities, most of them (213) by Italy. In the same period last year 436 migrants were returned to Slovenia.

STA, 15 October 2019 - The Novo Mesto police, which noticed signs of a migrant smuggling ring on the south-eastern section of the border with Croatia a year ago, said on Tuesday they had caught 11 individuals suspected of involvement in at least 30 smuggling operations.

The investigation showed that prices for the transport of individual migrants ranged between 300 and 400 euros.

France Božičnik of the Novo Mesto Police Administration said that the smuggling had mostly been done in the boots of cars rented abroad.

Several arrests of Slovenian suspects, aged between 20 and 30, and mostly from the area near the border, were made by Slovenian police, while Croatian police also arrested several Slovenian and Croatian citizens.

Criminal complaints have been filed against 11 individuals, with several house searches conducted in September yielding evidence of a people smuggling ring.

The head of the ring has been in prison since June over unrelated criminal acts, while the rest have not been detained. They face up to eight years in prison.

Meanwhile, Božičnik said that a total of 86 of migrant smugglers had been arrested in area overseen by Novo Mesto police this year. They had tried to smuggle 530 foreigners. In 2018, 52 smugglers were caught, who tried to get 290 migrants across the border.

Two migrants crash car stolen from near Novo mesto

STA, 16 October 2019 - Two citizens of Morocco were involved in a car accident in central Slovenia at 4 AM this morning. According to police, the pair, which had illegally crossed the border, hit a road fence on a regional road between Litija and Zagorje, just east of Ljubljana while driving a stolen car.

The cause of the accident was speeding and the car was allegedly stolen in the Novo Mesto area, the Ljubljana police department said in a press release.

The driver sustained light injuries and was transported to the Trbovlje general hospital in an ambulance, while the passenger was not injured.

The police investigation continues.

STA, 2 October 2019 - Even though the agreement on joint patrols policing the Slovenian-Italian border ended on Monday, police cooperation between the two countries is still in place in certain areas, in particular in the Koper Police Department district, police told the STA on Wednesday.

However, joint police patrols are no longer patrolling the Nova Gorica Police Department district.

Joint patrols were carried out between 1 July and 30 September. During this time, 46 joint patrols were deployed in the Koper Police area - 36 in Slovenia and 10 in Italy. Altogether, 276 hours were used for patrolling and a total of twelve Slovenian police officers were part of the joint patrols, said the police.

In the first nine months of this year the Koper Police apprehended about 3,920 illegal migrants (some 1,920 during the joint patrolling period), an increase over the same period last year when they caught some 3,270 foreigners who had crossed the border illegally (about 1,780 during the July-September period last year).

Despite the agreement coming to an end, Italy and Slovenia have carried on with policing the border together due to the pressing illegal migration situation and based on the agreement's terms and arrangement with the Italian authorities.

Both countries are also interested in extending their cooperation to other forms of joint effort enabled by the agreement, including joint analyses and forming a joint investigative task force.

According to the Koper police, joint patrols are effective and successful at their job. The police officers involved in them are motivated for this kind of work and are directly exchanging know-how, experience and information regarding illegal migrations.

On the other hand, the Nova Gorica police have decided not to proceed with joint patrolling, having agreed with the Italian authorities to end such police cooperation already on 9 August.

During the joint patrolling period, six joint patrols were carried out in the Nova Gorica area - half of them in Slovenia.

Until 29 September, the Nova Gorica police apprehended 190 illegal migrants (some 40 during the joint patrolling period), which is more than in the same period last year - 61 persons who had illegally crossed the Slovenian-Croatian border (some 30 during the July-August period last year).

STA, 17 September 2019 - Slovenia keeps seeing a surge in illegal migration with the latest police data showing that the number of illegal crossings peaked at 2,352 in August, the highest monthly figure since the 2015-16 refugee crisis.

In the first eight months of the year, police registered 9,801 instances of people trying to cross illegally into the country, which compares to 5,899 in the whole last year.

In most of the cases the migrants were citizens of Pakistan (2,344), followed by Algerians (1,427) and Afghanis (1,064).

The largest number of cases was handled by the Koper, Novo Mesto and Ljubljana police departments (3,310, 2,672 and 1,975, respectively.

The migrants filed 2,577 petitions for asylum between January and the end of August this year, almost 500 more than in the whole of 2018.

Of the 2,475 petitions whose processing has been completed, asylum status was granted to 49 migrants.

Slovenian police returned 6,533 migrants to foreign law enforcement authorities (2,411 in the whole of 2018), while foreign police forces returned 461 migrants to Slovenia (372 in the 12 months of 2018).

Numerous outlets are carrying a report from the Associated Press about armed individuals – carrying knives – now patrolling Slovenia’s border with Croatia. These are part of Andrej Šiško’s Štajerska varda (“Home Guard”), the anti-migrant movement led by the former football hooligan, presidential candidate and recent prison inmate. Šiško is quoted as saying his goal is “to train people to defend their country and help the military and police at a time of massive migrations from the African and Asian states, mostly Muslims.”

One member of the group is Blaž Židar, a “47-year-old former Slovenian army soldier, dressed in camouflage trousers with a long knife hanging from his belt” who  goes on daily patrols near his village of Radovica. The story quotes him as saying “I would prefer to enjoy my retirement peacefully, but security reasons are preventing this.” He goes on to say that his six children often join him on patrol, along with his wife, “because they have to learn how to protect their nation from intruders.”

Related: 1 in 8 Slovenians is an immigrant

The reporter, Dušan Stojanović, goes on to interview Miha Kovač, a Slovenian political analyst and professor at the University of Ljubljana, who describes such anti-migrant groups as made up of “guys with big beer bellies who don’t have much of an education, who didn’t have much of a career, who don’t know what to do with themselves in the contemporary world. They find their meaning in this kind of movement and this kind of hatred toward migrants.”

While Kovač doesn’t see the movement as an immediate danger, he says the problem would get worse if Slovenia had significant numbers of immigrants, from 20-50,000.

Meanwhile, the story claims the authorities are happy to turn a blind eye to the patrols, as long as they stay within the law. As France Bozicnik, the head of criminal police at a police station near the border, states: “People call us on the phone every day and give us information about suspicious vehicles and suspicious persons, and we sincerely thank them for this information.”

You can see the full story here, while all our stories on Andrej Šiško are here

STA, 13 September 2019 - Slovenian Interior Minister Boštjan Poklukar proposed that Slovenia and Austria form joint police patrols to police the Slovenian-Austrian border, as he hosted his counterpart Wolfgang Peschorn for a visit in Ljubljana on Friday.

Peschorn, saying it was a good proposal, announced the Austrian government would examine it to see if it could fully contain the migration pressure.

Slovenia has recently introduced similar police patrols with Italy.

Poklukar reiterated Slovenia's stance that Austria's border checks with Slovenia had a negative impact on local population on both sides of the border, causing economic damage and long lines of vehicles on the shared border.

He said this was the reason why he had suggested Austria eliminated border checks and set up mixed police patrols with Slovenia.

The Austrian minister said the government planned to take a new decision on the border checks in mid-October.

Austria introduced checks on the border with Slovenia, which is an internal EU border, at the peak of the 2015 refugee crisis, and has been extending them ever since.

Poklukar also announced Slovenia would soon send its police attache to the Austrian capital of Vienna.

Both ministers said they supported effective control of the EU's external borders and a comprehensive solution to the migration issue at the EU level.

The Salzburg Forum, meeting in Vienna in November, will thus discuss initiatives for a more efficient asylum and migration policy.

A message needs to be sent out that illegal migrations and human smuggling do not pay off, the Austrian minister stressed, adding that this applied to the Balkan route as well as other routes in the Mediterranean.

Poklukar acknowledged that illegal migrations have been increasing for four years, but he said there was "no cause for concern". "Slovenia is a safe country and Slovenian police are managing the situation."

As Poklukar noted, Slovenian police had apprehended roughly 9,800 illegal migrants so far this year, with the majority returned to Croatia; Austria, meanwhile returned only 62 persons to Slovenia.

"This data shows that Slovenia conducts effective control of its southern border."

Both officials also commented on the threat by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he will open Turkey's borders and let Syrian refugees into Europe.

Peschorn said "announcements are commonplace in polit
On the sidelines of the visit, he decorated two Slovenian police officers wiics, but it is always important what happens," but stressed that the situation on the Turkish-Greek border would inform Austria's decision on whether to extent police checks.

Poklukar said that the 2016 deal the EU struck with Turkey in 2016 helped significantly reduce migrations from Syria and the Middle East. Slovenia's position is that the deal is very important.

STA, 12 September 2019 - A sports journalist of the commercial broadcaster POP TV was apprehended last Sunday by the Slovenian police on the border with Croatia under suspicion of smuggling illegal migrants to Slovenia.

Reporting on the incident on its web portal 24ur.com on Thursday, POP TV condemned and distanced itself from the actions by the journalist, who has already been dismissed.

The Ljubljana-based private broadcaster regretted the incident and explained that it had not been acquainted with the acts by the journalist committed outside his job and that it had not been aware of the possible personal circumstances he had found himself in.

POP TV condemned any violations of regulations, adding that, as smuggling and assistance in smuggling migrants across the border with Croatia was on the rise, it would continue to report extensively on the "abuse of the distress of refugees and of the victims of smuggling".

Two Serbians found with 12 migrants in back seat of car

STA, 12 September 2019 - Two Serbians smuggling a dozen illegal migrants were arrested early morning on Thursday following a car chase of at least 10 kilometres. When the car was forced to a stop, the police found ten Pakistanis and two Indians cramped in the back seat.

The police tried to pull the car over just outside the town of Ljutomer in northeast Slovenia, but the driver continued driving at high speed in the direction of the motorway, the Murska Sobota Police Administration said.

This started a car chase that ended when the car driven by one of the Serbians crashed into the police car and then hit the safety rail on the motorway, according to the police.

The press release does not specify how long the chase lasted, but the nearest motorway entrance is some 10 kilometres away from the location where the police spotted the suspicious car.

The man in the passenger seat escaped the car but was tracked down by the police. The Serbian citizens were both detained and will be charged with smuggling illegal migrants, which carries a sentence of up to five years and a fine.

All our stories on illegal migration can be found here

STA, 10 September 2019 - Ormož police have caught a man from Ljubljana transporting in his van as many as 40 foreigners who had illegally crossed the border. One person had to be hospitalised, while the 35-year-old driver was brought before an investigating judge, who ordered that he be placed in custody.

 Next to the 40 foreigners caught in the van, police found another six, who could not fit in the van, in a near-by forest.

Among the foreigners apprehended 40 were the citizens of Pakistan, five of Afghanistan and one of India, the Maribor Police Department said in a press release.

One of the foreigners had to be admitted to a hospital because his health condition suddenly deteriorated, while the rest have already been returned to Croatian police.

The 35-year-old driver from Ljubljana remains in custody in Ptuj.