King Charles III arrives in Rome on state visit, first overseas trip since brief hospitalization

MADRID: Spanish police said on Sunday they had broken a ring that had brought in up to 2,500 Moroccan irregular immigrants via Romania, arresting four suspects.

The four were detained in the southeastern Murcia province on charges of belonging to a criminal organization and facilitating irregular migration, the Guardia Civil said in a statement.

The Moroccans entered Europe by plane to Romania, from where they were transported to Spain, with each one charged 3,000 euros ($3,400) for the voyage, it said. The suspects were alleged to be the ringleaders of the organization. Their nationalities were not specified.

Spanish authorities believe the ring organized 50 such trips over the past two years, each one composed of between 20 and 50 Moroccans, making for a total of between 1,000 and 2,500 irregular immigrants.

The outfit was alleged to have a “logistics center” in Romania where it hid the migrants while they awaited their transport to Spain.

The Guardia Civil said the operation to bust the ring was conducted with the help of Europol and the European Union’s border patrol agency Frontex.

DAR ES SALAAM: Tanzania’s main opposition party has been disqualified from upcoming general elections, the country’s election chief said, after it refused to sign an electoral code of conduct.

The east African nation has increasingly cracked down on its opposition ahead of a general election due in October.

The opposition Chadema party has accused President Samia Suluhu Hassan of returning to the repressive tactics of her predecessor, John Magufuli.

Chadema leader Tundu Lissu, who was arrested and charged with treason earlier in the week, previously said that his party would not participate in the polls without electoral reform.

On Saturday, Chadema said the party’s secretary-general John Mnyika would not attend an Independent National Elections Commission meeting to sign the government’s electoral code of conduct.

The decision was “informed by the lack of a written response” to the party’s “proposal and demands for essential electoral reforms,” it said in a statement.

INEC Director of Elections Ramadhani Kailima said following the meeting that “any party that hasn’t signed today will not be allowed to take part in the general election or any other elections for the next five years.” “There will be no second chance,” he told reporters.

He did not mention Chadema by name, and the party has not commented on the INEC’s decision.

Tanzania is scheduled to hold presidential and national assembly elections in October.

President Hassan’s party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi swept to victory in local elections last year.

Chadema said those elections had been manipulated, and that it would petition the high court to demand reforms ahead of the upcoming polls.

Lissu last year warned that Chadema would “block the elections through confrontation” unless the electoral system was reformed.

The opposition’s demands have been long ignored by the ruling party.

Hassan was initially feted for easing restrictions imposed by Magufuli on the opposition and the media in the country of 67 million people.

But rights groups and Western governments have criticized what they see as renewed repression, with the arrests of Chadema politicians as well as abductions and murders of opposition figures.