40 Arrested in Police Operation ‘Tara’

Besides Croatian police, there were officers from Slovenia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Austria. The arrested group moved people to the EU.

In the police operation “Tara”, that took place since yesterday morning all over Croatia, around 40 people have arrested who are linked to human trafficking. The police are still searching for a few people, according to a source close to USKOK (Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organized Crime), who are the coordinators of the operation.

Trafficking people to the EU

Today, after criminal processing, those arrested should be brought to the investigation centre of the Zagreb County Court, says the same source who does not want to be named.

The police headquarters did not give any more information on the operation that started to be prepared at the end of last year. “Tara” targets organized groups that operate with smuggling people from a number of countries into the European Union, and the operation started yesterday morning in the regions of eleven police headquarters.

During the operation, the suburb of Sitnice in Mursko Sredisce was totally blocked by police forces, and the local media reported that nobody was allowed to leave the suburb.

The spokesperson of the Medjimurje police, Krunoslav Gosaric, only conformed that in that region “police investigations are being carried out linked to the illegal transport of people over state borders”.

One of the largest anti-trafficking operations in the former Yugoslavia region

The arrested group of smugglers allegedly illegally moved migrants over the borders of Bosnia Herzegovina, Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia, and to a lesser extent in Serbia.

According to media estimates, this is one of the largest anti-human trafficking operations in the area of the former Yugoslavia, in recent years.

Some media state that operation “Tara” was continued based on extensive work by the Slovenian police, who arrested 17 people last week for human trafficking, mainly Albanians from Kosovo.