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Migrants entered Italy as ‘acrobats and jugglers’

About 500 migrants each paid up to €15,000 to be smuggled into Italy as “employees” of the circus business, Italian police said on Tuesday.

Published: 10 November 2015 14:53 CET

Migrants entered Italy as 'acrobats and jugglers'

The migrants were allegedly smuggled into Italy as circus workers. Photo: DirkJan Ranzijn

The migrants from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan were passed off as acrobats, jugglers and tight-rope walkers in an elaborate scam which netted the international trafficking organization behind it over €7 million, police in Palermo said.

Each migrant allegedly paid up to €15,000 to obtain a false work permit from workers within Sicily’s regional authorities, of which between €2,000 and €3,000 lined the pockets of circus owners, Palermo Today reported.

Police have detained 41 people, including public service workers and people linked to the national and international circus industry.

The scammers were able to exploit a clause in Italy’s immigration law which grants permits to qualified workers from abroad within the entertainment sector, including circus workers and those working in opera and theatre – provided they get special permission from a local authority.

Police said a key protagonist in the scam was Vito Gambino, a 54-year-old labour department manager from Sicily who was in charge of administering work permits in the sector. He would allegedly grant false permits for the circus industry's fictitious new hires.

The permit enabled the non-EU immigrants to then obtain a visa for Italy.

Circus owners Lino and Sandra Orfei, Alvaro Bizzarri and Darvin Cristiani are also being investigated for aiding illegal immigration.

Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Officials had been carrying out an “intensive review for several months… to allow the deportation of serious criminals and dangerous individuals to Afghanistan”, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told journalists.

“It is clear to me that people who pose a potential threat to Germany’s security must be deported quickly,” Faeser said.

“That is why we are doing everything possible to find ways to deport criminals and dangerous people to both Syria and Afghanistan,” she said.

Deportations to Afghanistan from Germany have been completely stopped since the Taliban retook power in 2021.

But a debate over resuming expulsions has resurged after a 25-year-old Afghan was accused of attacking people with a knife at an anti-Islam rally in the western city of Mannheim on Friday.

A police officer, 29, died on Sunday after being repeatedly stabbed as he tried to intervene in the attack.

Five people taking part in a rally organised by Pax Europa, a campaign group against radical Islam, were also wounded.

Friday’s brutal attack has inflamed a public debate over immigration in the run up to European elections and prompted calls to expand efforts to expel criminals.

READ ALSO: Tensions high in Mannheim after knife attack claims life of policeman

The suspect, named in the media as Sulaiman Ataee, came to Germany as a refugee in March 2013, according to reports.

Ataee, who arrived in the country with his brother at the age of only 14, was initially refused asylum but was not deported because of his age, according to German daily Bild.

Ataee subsequently went to school in Germany, and married a German woman of Turkish origin in 2019, with whom he has two children, according to the Spiegel weekly.

Per the reports, Ataee was not seen by authorities as a risk and did not appear to neighbours at his home in Heppenheim as an extremist.

Anti-terrorism prosecutors on Monday took over the investigation into the incident, as they looked to establish a motive.

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