Serbia busts human trafficking networks: report

(BELGRADE) - Serbian police have arrested seven people after dismantling several networks for trafficking would-be immigrants to western Europe, a Belgrade daily reported Wednesday.

The seven, who included a policeman and hotel owner in the northern town of Subotica, were suspected of having attempted to smuggle some 280 people across the nearby border with Hungary, said the newspaper Politika.

The would-be immigrants, who were to be transported along several channels using vans, were ethnic Albanians mostly from the breakaway southern Serbian province of Kosovo, but also from Albania and Macedonia.

The former Yugoslav republic of Serbia lies on a Balkan route used by organised crime gangs to smuggle drugs, arms and people west into richer European countries.