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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