Two in court accused of making over $30k from human trafficking

Two men appeared in court in northern Nicosia on Friday, accused of making exactly $30,400 (€29,243) by trafficking people into the north from Sri Lanka.

Police officer Yaren Yemenicioglu told the court that the pair had been arrested on suspicion of money laundering, human trafficking, and preparing false documents.

She explained that it had been reported in the media that people were being trafficked into the north with fake documents in exchange for money paid to the pair to find them work, but that when they arrived in Cyprus, they were “left to their fate”.

A total of 15 Sri Lankan nationals travelled to the north as part of the scheme, paying the pair four-figure sums each in the hope that the two suspects would find them work.

Yemenicioglu said one of the pair works for a tourism company, and that both were responsible for creating fake tourism documents to allow the third country nationals to travel to the north, while one of the suspects then signed the documents.

She also told the court that the tourism business used to create the forged documents “has not had its operating licence renewed since March 31”.

She said one of the pair was arrested while attempting to cross to the Republic at the Astromeritis crossing point, and that the police could not find his mobile phone.

The other suspect had told police he had thrown the mobile phone into the sea and refused to show the police where exactly he had thrown it.

Both suspects were released on bail, with judge Nuray Necdet ruling that they be held on bails of 100,000TL (€2,734), with two guarantors ordered to sign bonds worth 400,000TL (€10,934) for one and 500,000TL (€13,668) for the other.

The arrest comes at the end of a year of revelations regarding human trafficking in the north, with newspaper Ozgur Gazete in August having published graphic images of shacks in which large numbers of migrant workers who had been brought to the north to pick fruit were living.

Journalist Pinar Barut said of the workers’ living conditions that “the scene we encountered in Morphou horrified us. The workers we spoke to said they have been living in these conditions for months.”

“They are all trying to survive in a slave camp, filthy, unemployed, penniless, with no water, electricity, hygiene, toilets, or bathrooms. No one has visited them for months,” she added.

One of the workers told the newspaper, “I came two months and 10 days ago, and I only worked for a month. We buy rice and chicken with our own money and eat here.”

Another said he had been paid 24,000TL (€632 at the time) for his first month’s work, before being paid just 7,000TL (€184 at the time) for his second month, and not being paid since. 

The north’s Refugee Rights Association (MHD) described the finding of the camps by journalists in August as a “human trafficking scandal” and added that it had a “great impact on society” and has “revealed the ongoing human tragedy in the north of Cyprus”.

“Reports prepared by lawyers and observers from the Human Rights Platform [IHP] determined that these workers were working under conditions which were not in accordance with their basic human rights, and that they were being housed in inappropriate conditions,” they said.

They also said a “needs analysis” study had been carried out, which found that the people living on the sites required “urgent humanitarian aid and legal support”.