Some illegal immigration routes are more impenetrable than others. Investigators from the Office for Combating Illicit Trafficking of Migrants (OLTIM) were able to observe this by dismantling a vast criminal network which organized the massive transport of Tunisian migrants to France. Led by the powerful Serbian clan "El Tetwani" or "Tetouani", in reference to the Moroccan city of Tetouan, where its leader comes from, this international mafia supervised the crossing of illegal immigrants from the Maghreb via the route of Balkans.
Thirteen people were arrested on Monday in the Paris region as well as other French departments as part of this investigation, led by the National Jurisdiction responsible for the fight against organized crime (Junalco), opened for multiple offenses: aid to illegal entry and stay in organized gangs, human trafficking in organized gangs, money laundering, etc.
Parcels containing Tunisian passports
The investigations began following a report from the delivery company DHL which noted, from October 2022, an abnormal influx of shipments of parcels containing Tunisian passports coming from Serbia and destined for several addresses on the Island. -of France. According to the investigation, candidates for French exile left the Maghreb, in particular Tunisia, and then headed towards Eastern Europe to cover their tracks.
Supported by the network in Serbia, a stopping point on their journey, they then had to give their identity documents to their smugglers. Once the passage to France was successful, thanks to new false papers, the criminal organization was responsible for sending them their Tunisian passports back to France by DHL parcel to the hideouts where they were hosted.
With the collaboration of Europol, French police officers from OLTIM were quickly able to identify the hand of the “Tetouanis” gang. The leaders and organizers of the network are said to be hiding abroad to organize their lucrative trafficking, notably in Tunisia, Serbia, Hungary and Turkey. But they have a lot of complicity in France, between the logisticians responsible for recovering the packages containing the passports, the collectors of money given by migrants and launderers, the makers of false documents as well as the hosts.
A singer who filmed several music videos in Serbia
Thirteen people were taken into custody on Monday. At the end of their hearings, ten were presented to an investigating judge in Paris. One, suspected of being the wife of a network leader, was indicted and placed in pre-trial detention on Thursday. This young woman, pregnant, has the particularity of also being a Tunisian singer with a certain notoriety on YouTube, where she has published several clips, notably filmed in Serbia. At the time of her arrest, the suspect was in an advanced stage of her pregnancy.
The nine other suspects were in turn referred this Friday for indictment. According to an article from Courrier International dating from October 2023, this clan of “Tetouanis” is based in a border area in the north of Serbia, where they are known for “the violence of their methods”, not hesitating to brutalize the migrants who refuse their services or their competitors in the illegal immigration market.