Ahmad 
Italian police said on Wednesday they had arrested 12 people suspected of involvement in human smuggling by organizing speedboat transfers of at least 73 illegal migrants from Tunisia to Europe.
Italian police said in a statement that experts in speedboat driving transported migrants from Tunisia to Sicily’s Marsa Ali between June and September last year in what they described as “VIP trips”.
The statement said the smugglers transported relatively small groups of up to 20 individuals on each of the four voyages for a fee of 6,000 euros ($6,500) per person.
Police arrested six Tunisians and six Italians as part of an investigation coordinated between Europol and Italy’s anti-mafia police unit, which investigators said was a former Tunisian police officer who ran the human trafficking organization that carried out the operations.
Italy and other European governments have been toughening on migration for years, amid rising numbers of arrivals of asylum seekers and illegal migrants, and EU data shows fewer than 100,000 illegal migrants arrived in Europe in 2020, but that number rose to 250,000 last year.
Instead of Libya, Tunisia has become the main starting point from North Africa for those wishing to flee poverty and conflict from Africa and across the Middle East to Europe in the hope of a better life.