German police arrest two men accused of smuggling as many as 200 migrants into the EU

BERLIN (AP) — German police have arrested two men following raids targeting organized migrant smuggling in the country’s capital and the northern state of Lower Saxony. About 260 officers took part in Thursday’s raids during which eight properties where searched in Lower Saxony and another six in Berlin. The suspects are accused of smuggling more than 200 migrants, most of them Syrians, into the European Union. German news agency dpa reported that the two suspects belong to a group of mostly Iraqi smugglers that believed to have carried out at least 12 smuggling trips between August 2022 and June 2023, during which they allegedly smuggled at least 208 people into the EU.