ROME: Italian border police have arrested a 33-year-old Turkish citizen wanted in Europe after being sentenced by a Greek court to 25 years in prison for human trafficking.
The man, who has not been named by police, was caught at Orio al Serio airport in the northern Italian province of Bergamo as he was about to board a direct flight to Turkey.
He is charged with human trafficking and facilitating the illegal entrance of migrants.
Greek judicial authorities had issued a European arrest warrant for the man after he was convicted and sentenced for human trafficking between Turkey and Greece in 2014. He is now being held in a Bergamo jail.
He had previously been arrested in Italy in 2015 after a court in the Calabrian city of Crotone accused him of being involved in aiding clandestine and irregular immigration to Italy.
On that occasion, he had been stopped in Italian territorial waters on a 30-meter twin-mast sailing boat flying a US flag with 124 foreigners of various nationalities onboard, including many women and unaccompanied children, who said they had departed from Turkey five days earlier.
The boat had been towing a rubber dinghy which authorities said would have been used by the traffickers to transfer the migrants to land.
