The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, Europol, announced the arrest of three people suspected of belonging to two Syrian smuggling networks following an operation involving Germany and Serbia.

Europol said in a statement on Thursday, Aug. 6, that investigators “targeted senior members of two interconnected Syrian criminal networks believed to have organized the smuggling of more than 900 migrants into the European Union.”

Those arrested included a 26-year-old Syrian man in Germany and another Syrian, aged 31, in Serbia, along with another suspect in the Serbian capital, Belgrade.

Europol accuses the two networks of transporting migrants to Europe since 2022 through Mediterranean routes from Libya and through the Balkans.

The arrests come as Europe struggles to deal with the fallout from a crisis last week, when more than 70,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish city of Ceuta in North Africa.

Fewer Syrians in Migrant Smuggling Cases in Germany

Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, in cooperation with the Federal Police, issued its annual report on smuggling crimes for 2025, showing a significant decline in irregular migration and human smuggling offenses compared with 2024.

The report said the number of migrant smuggling cases fell by 41.2% during 2025.

Although the number of Syrian suspects in migrant smuggling cases declined from 624 in 2024 to 455 in 2025, Syrians remained the largest group among non-German suspects, accounting for 17.8%, compared with 18.1% the previous year.

The report attributed the high proportion of Syrian suspects to what it described as the “usual similarity in nationality and ethnicity between smugglers and the people being smuggled,” as well as the presence of a large Syrian community in Germany, which facilitates the recruitment of relatives or friends to work as drivers within smuggling networks.

In organized crime cases, Syrian groups whose main activity was human smuggling topped the list, with 14 groups, compared with 15 in 2024.

However, German nationals accounted for the largest number of individual suspects associated with these groups, at 177, followed by Syrians at 166, compared with 144 Germans and 168 Syrians, respectively, in 2024.