Iran says 13,000 arrested in anti-human trafficking drive

AP Worldstream; Mar 11, 2006

Iran has over the past year arrested some 13,000 foreign nationals
attempting to illegally cross into neighboring nations, the official
Islamic Republic News Agency reported Saturday.

It said the foreigners mostly came from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and
Pakistan.

They were detained while attempting to cross into Turkey with the
intention of moving on to Western Europe, according to Gen. Hasan
Karami, police chief of Iran’s northwestern Azerbaijan province, which
has borders with Armenia, Turkey and Iraq.

The news agency’s report also said that a total of 25 human
trafficking rings have been uncovered by police over the past year.