More Sweden-Stranded Berry Pickers Make It Home to Bulgaria

A total of 197 Bulgarian citizens who were stranded in Stockholm after being lured to Sweden with the promise of work during the berry picking season have returned to Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Interior Ministry said Saturday.

The first bus bringing wannabe berry pickers who were in Sweden without labor contracts came back to Bulgaria Friday afternoon, followed by another one Friday night, and two more Saturday morning.

Upon receiving the buses at the Vidin border crossing point in Northwestern Bulgaria, the border police have detained a total of three of them who had been wanted for different crimes.

The Bulgarian citizens, many of them from the Roma community, who were tricked to go to Sweden as berry pickers without contracts, spent several days camping in a bus before the Bulgarian Embassy in Stockholm. Another group of them set up camp in the outskirts of the Swedish capital, and committed a number of crimes in the region, according to the Swedish authorities.

On Monday, a 43-year-old man, whose name was not given, was detained in Sweden suspected of human trafficking, after a number of the berry pickers reported to local police he had tricked them into making the trip.

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