The killing of four immigrant farmworkers in southern Italy has turned a long-running labor abuse problem into a national crisis. On Monday, four men from Afghanistan and Pakistan were burned to death inside a vehicle at a gas station in Calabria; a fifth man, 35-year-old Afghan worker Mohammad Taj Alamyar, escaped through the rear of the vehicle and is now speaking about what happened. He says the group, legal residents who worked without pay under threat of violence, were getting a ride back from a shift picking strawberries when they requested wages from the men who arranged their work and housing, per the Guardian and New York Times. Surveillance video then shows two people pouring gasoline on the vehicle and blocking its doors as it goes up in flames.
Prosecutors say the two arrested suspects, both 31-year-old Pakistani men legally residing in Italy, are drug traffickers with links to Italian organized crime. Named as Safeer Ahmed and Ali Raza, they now face charges of aggravated murder. The case has renewed scrutiny of "caporalato," an illegal labor-broker system in Italy in which criminal gangs recruit mostly migrants to work in difficult conditions for little pay. Officials liken it to "modern slavery." Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni pledged to fight the system after a farm worker from India was crushed by machinery in 2024 and allegedly left to die by his employer, per the Guardian. Her government has since increased farm inspections and opened up new paths for legal foreign workers. She has promised justice for this "terrible crime."
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