Cablegate: Operation Promised Land - Italians and Poles Take

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Anne W McNeill 10/05/2006 04:28:26 PM From DB/Inbox: Search Results

Cable
Text:

UNCLAS WARSAW 01570

SIPDIS
CXWARSAW:
ACTION: POL
INFO: AMB AGRI MGT PASC ORA ECON ODC RSO FCS DCM DAO
CONS

DISSEMINATION: POLO
CHARGE: PROG

APPROVED: POL:DTMORRIS
DRAFTED: POL:KREAD
CLEARED: LEGATT: JBIENKOWSKI

VZCZCWRI961
PP RUEHC RUEHZL RUEHRO RUEHKW
DE RUEHWR #1570/01 2140849
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 020849Z AUG 06
FM AMEMBASSY WARSAW
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 1518
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUEHRO/AMEMBASSY ROME 0867
RUEHKW/AMCONSUL KRAKOW 1222

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 WARSAW 001570

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PHUM KJUS KCRM PGOV PL
SUBJECT: OPERATION PROMISED LAND - ITALIANS AND POLES TAKE
DOWN SLAVE LABOR CAMP

REF: WARSAW 1409

1. Summary: On July 18, Polish and Italian police made
simultaneous arrests of 25 individuals allegedly involved in
the trafficking and forced labor of an estimated 1000 Polish
citizens in the Apulia region of southern Italy. PolOff and
LegAtt met with the Polish police officers involved in the
international investigation and arrests, called operation
"Ziemia Obiecana" or "Promised Land," on July 26 to both
congratulate them on their success and deepen U.S.-Polish
cooperation on similarly large and complicated trafficking
cases. End Summary.

2. On July 19, the story broke in the Polish press of the
arrest of 25 individuals involved in the trafficking of
workers from Poland to southern Italy. The press speculated
that approximately one thousand Poles were victimized in the
estimated two to three year scheme, although only 113 were
freed from the camp in Nova Orta on July 18. On July 26,
PolOff and LegAtt met with Andrzej Trela, Director of the
Polish National Police's (PNP) Criminal Bureau, and Pawel
Maslowski, the newly-appointed head of the Anti-Trafficking
Task Force, who described the intricacies of the case.

Tip From Polish Consulate in Rome
---------------------------------

3. According to Trela, the PNP received information from the
Polish Consulate in Rome in early 2006 that they had reports
of Polish citizens who "escaped" from slave labor camps in
Southern Italy and made their way to safety by hiding on
trains. In order to investigate these claims, Trela invited
representatives of the Italian anti-mafia Caribinieri to
Warsaw in March 2006. In the course of their information
sharing, they discovered that the Italians had been
investigating the same group since 2004, and they decided to
start working together and sharing all information, both
through EUROPOL and directly.

Cooperation Specifics
---------------------

4. Maslowski told us that his preference had been to set up a
joint team, but unfortunately Italian laws did not permit
such an arrangement. Instead, they set up "mirror
investigations" in Poland and Italy. The Italians sent two
officers to Warsaw, and the Poles sent four officers to Rome
to assist with surveillance. The accreditation for visiting
officers was provided by EUROPOL, and the officers wore their
national uniforms, but did not carry weapons. The most
challenging aspect of the cooperation, according to
Maslowski, was the European arrest warrant, which Polish
prosecutors require in original form to authorize the arrest
of subjects in Poland. Before the raid on the camp in Nova
Orta, Poles and Italians coordinated their simultaneous
arrests via EUROPOL in the Hague. In addition to the subjects
detained in Italy, the Polish Border Guards detained several
of the group's transporters en route from Italy to Poland
before they were tipped off. The Poles and Italians conducted
the raid on July 18 because their surveillance indicated a
group of thirty Polish citizens would be transported from
Lubelskie province (in Eastern Poland) to Italy that week.

Victim Recruitment
------------------

5. According to Maslowski, Polish workers were lured from
Poland to Italy by newspaper advertisements with promises of
5-9 euro per hour for agricultural work in Italy, but when
they arrived at the camp in Orta Nova were made to work by
armed guards for 1.75 to 3 euro per hour. Victims were told
they were in debt because of their costly transfer, and were
charged for their room and board at the camp. Victims were
unable to work off their debt and were thus caught in an
indentured servitude situation. The camp guards were adept at
applying cruel punishment and intimidation tactics to squash
any opposition to the clearly unfair situation.

WWII Labor Camps Model
----------------------

6. Through surveillance of communications from the camp and
their interviews with victims after the raid on the camp, the
PNP discovered that, in a twisted throwback to a darker
period of Polish history, the camp guards called themselves
"kapos" and referred to the transporters as "Eichman." It was
also apparent that local Italian police in Apulia knew about
the labor camps, as several victims said escapees who alerted
local police upon their escape were returned to the camp and
severely beaten. The victims were housed in pig pens and had
no access to bathrooms or water. Camp guards employed brutal
public punishments and killings. Victims told the PNP that
guards left one exhausted woman tied up and left all day to
die in the sun, beat another man to death with pipes, and
hung others from barn beams.

Takedown and Next Steps
-----------------------

7. Coordination was so smooth on July 18 that the Italian and
Polish police were able to raid the camp without a sound or
shot fired. The victims helped Polish and Italian police
identify camp guards who attempted to blend in to the group
of 113 laborers, and 25 individuals were arrested, including
those detained in Poland. According to Maslowski, the bulk of
those detained are Poles. (One Italian, two Ukrainians, and
one Algerian were arrested.) The Poles will all be prosecuted
here in Poland for trafficking in persons, membership in a
criminal group, and enslavement. Maslowski said his team is
also trying to gather evidence from the oral testimonies of
the victims for murder charges against the group's most
brutal criminals.

8. COMMENT: Over the past year, we have heard many of our NGO
and Police contacts tell us that trafficking for forced
labor, as opposed to trafficking for sexual services, is a
growing concern. The national coordinator of the GOP's
interagency working group to combat trafficking told us in
early July that training for law enforcement officials and
regional labor inspectors to detect forced labor more
effectively would be a priority this year. This case
reinforces the need for such training and public awareness.
It also highlights the PNP's ability to work effectively to
protect Polish citizens throughout Europe with large-scale
takedowns of sophisticated criminal organizations (Reftel).
However, we remain interested in what further investigations
will reveal about the role of powerful Italian landowners and
corrupt Italian officials, and hopeful that the recent GOI
decision to open their labor market to the new EU 10 workers
will curb further enslavement of desperate Poles hoping to
earn a living in their "promised land." End comment.
HILLAS

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