Skopje, 25 March 2025 (MIA) - The Basic Prosecutor’s Office for Prosecuting Organized Crime and Corruption has launched an investigation into three people – a father and two sons – who were arrested on Monday evening for holding six young migrants captive in the village of Studenichani near Skopje.

The Prosecutor’s Office said it proposed the three people be kept in detention due to a founded suspicion of organizing a group and abetment in performing crimes of human trafficking, trafficking with minors and smuggling of migrants.

The Office said it had received an email on Monday with a link to a location stating: “We are 6 foreigners and we were kidnapped by an armed group which is demanding money to free us. Please help us urgently”. The email was then forwarded to the Interior Ministry, which carried out searches at the premises in the village of Studenichani and found six migrants – five minors and one 19-year-old.

The Prosecutor’s Office said two of the suspects worked with “an organizer originating from the Arab countries who stayed in Greece and in the Skopje region” as part of an international crime network and organized an international crime group in North Macedonia with the goal of smuggling migrants for material gain. The group organized illegal smuggling of migrants from Greece to North Macedonia through illegal crossing points on the border, after which they were transported to the village of Studenichani where the three suspects temporarily kept them before illegally transporting them to the territory of Serbia and the countries of the European Union.

On March 21, the six migrants were illegally smuggled into the country, after which the primary suspect hid them in the basement premises of a building owned by his father in the village of Studenichani.

“To prevent the migrants from leaving the building, the premises in which they were kept were constantly locked, with the second and third suspects guarding the building. The suspects provided the migrants with minimal amounts of food and water – one bottle of water per day for all six migrants. They were allowed to leave the basement premises only to attend to their physiological needs. Several times a day the primary suspect endangered their lives and health threatening them that they won’t leave the basement unless their families pay EUR 5.000 to secure their further illegal smuggling to Serbia. To that end, he seized their phones and allowed two of them to have a video call with the organizer of the smuggling from the Arab countries once a day, so that he can inform their families of the need to pay the required funds,” the Prosecutor’s Office said.

A prosecutor at the Prosecutor’s Office has submitted a proposal to a pre-trial judge at the Basic Criminal Court to order detention for all suspects.

Photo: MIA Archive